The price of this AUKUS thing just keeps getting dearer.As Defence Minister, Richard Marles is uninspiring. He’s not across his brief. His recent statement saying Australia will not be taking US or UK nuclear waste under the AUKUS program is plainly wrong and contradicted by his own Department. Rex Patrick reports.
From 2027, Australia will start receiving low-level radioactive waste from the operation of American and British nuclear-powered submarines rotating through HMAS Stirling base in Western Australia. This is an indisputable fact outlined in fresh documents extracted from Defence using FOI.
And even though the Albanese Government has made it clear it has no appetite to take high-level radioactive waste from decommissioning US and UK subs, the legislation that has been tabled in the Parliament to regulate AUKUS nuclear waste would not prevent a future government from changing this with a simple policy shift.
One might suggest the chances of a future Australian government agreeing to accept high level nuclear waste from US or UK submarines is about a plausible as the idea Australia might let a foreign power test nuclear weapons on our shores. History shows all sorts of things are possible when the law allows.
Welded shut
Under the AUKUS agreement, the US and UK intend to provide Australia with submarine nuclear reactors as welded nuclear power units that will not require refuelling during their lifetime.
The Australian Government has gone to painstaking levels to explain to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the international body charged with monitoring nuclear weapon non-proliferation, that removing nuclear material from these reactors is highly complex – requiring specialist equipment, facilities and workforce – and doing so would render the power unit, and the submarines, inoperable.
The Government also points out the highly enriched fuel that will be used in Royal Australian Navy subs cannot be used in nuclear weapons without further chemical processing, which would require facilities that Australia does not have and will not seek to establish.
But sealed nuclear reactors do place a waste burden on the operators, in that the sustainment of them generates low level waste and the need to ultimately dispose of the spent fuel at the end of the reactor’s life.
Taking US and UK low-level nuclear waste
Day to day operation and sustainment of a nuclear reactor creates radioactive waste in the form of disposable gloves, wipes, reactor coolant and used tools and Personal Protective Equipment.
The amount of low-level waste produced by a submarine is about the size of a small skip each year. Australia will have to take care of the low-level waste generated over the life of the AUKUS submarines.
But in documents released under FOI laws, the Defence Department has confirmed that Australia will also take low-level nuclear waste from US and UK submarines.
https://michaelwest.com.au/defence-mini ... ear-waste/