Australia's uranium industry could lift output by about 20 percent in three years, government and industry officials said on Monday, as the nation gears up for its first major expansion of uranium mining in a decade.

Australia's uranium industry has been hamstrung since the early 1980s by political hostility to the nuclear fuel, but long-standing bans on new mines by various state governments are gradually being lifted in the face of economic crisis.

A state-government minister and an industry executive told a conference that Australia could boost annual output of uranium oxide to 12,460 tonnes by 2012 from new mines in South Australia and Western Australia and from expansion of existing mines.

Australia produced 10,101 tonnes last year from its three existing mines, two of which are in South Australia and the other in the Northern Territory. Western Australia lifted its ban on new mines last year and Queensland may also lift its ban soon.

South Australian state mines minister Paul Holloway said Japan's Mitsui & Co had already invested A$104 million ($68.3 million) in December for a 49 percent stake in a new mine project called Honeymoon in the state's outback.

Canada's Uranium One Inc, which owns the rest, aims to produce about 400 tonnes per annum from 2010 from Honeymoon.

"While we expect increased competition within Australia now that Western Australia has dropped its long-standing opposition to uranium mining, this state still retains its first-mover advantage," Holloway said in a prepared speech. Among existing uranium producers, Energy Resources of Australia, a unit of Rio Tinto, is expanding output at its Ranger mine in the Northern Territory and BHP Billiton plans to lift output at its Olympic Dam mine in South Australia.

The country's third mine, Beverley in South Australia, is operated by U.S. based General Atomic's Heathgate Resources.

In Western Australia, Toro Energy Ltd hopes to have its Wiluna project in production as early as 2012.

Toro Energy chief executive Greg Hall told the conference the Wiluna project could produce 680 tonnes a year.

Toro and BHP, with its Yeerlirrie project, are the only firms currently holding uranium mining leases in Western Australia.

Hall told the conference that long-term uranium prices of about US$70 per pound were likely to be maintained as new nuclear power plants were brought on-stream.

He said 43 new nuclear plants were being built and a further 106 planned world-wide, with 439 plants now in operation.