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.
The price of this AUKUS thing just keeps getting dearer.
I was listening to Turnbull on ABC News Radio as he discussed AUKUS and subs, in the light of the US's reframing their SSN delivery numbers.
“What does that mean for Australia? It means because the Morrison government [deal] – adopted by Albanese – has basically abandoned our sovereignty terms of submarines, we are completely dependent on what happens in the United States as to whether we get them. Now, the reality is the Americans are not going to make their submarine deficit worse than it is already by giving or selling submarines to Australia.”
Turnbull said Australia, under the AUKUS legislation, is completely controlled by the United States and American politics.
“The reality is, unless the Americans are able to dramatically change the pace at which they’re producing submarines – and there’s no reason to believe they will be able to do so – we will not ever get the submarines that were promised under AUKUS,” he said.
“This is what happens when you give up, when a sovereign nation abandons its sovereignty.”
Not quoted here is an option Turnbull called "division of labour", where Oz gets no subs, but the US gets to base subs in Oz and gives the appearance of doing all our sub work for us (with obvious benefits for the US and disadvantages for the host).
How about wiping the deal and seeing if Monsieur Macron feels particularly forgiving? (Just kidding! "Submarine" may not apply by delivery time, so let's see what uncrewed options we have.)
AUKUS is bizarre. It's like quantum physics, you just can't get your head around the counter-intuitive weirdness of it. We give all this money to the USA, which may or may not give us submarines in return. Schrodinger's subs!
Supposedly we really really need those submarines, but the French deal dumped to make way for AUKUS was more likely to result in real subs. (see the second, older link below, it's like a bad review for the US SubCo on Canstar or whatever)
Now I am surprised to learn that more than 500 people work in the department of non-submarines. Perhaps not so surprising, they are miserable.
stylofone wrote: ↑Thu Dec 05, 2024 6:10 pm
AUKUS is bizarre. It's like quantum physics, you just can't get your head around the counter-intuitive weirdness of it. We give all this money to the USA, which may or may not give us submarines in return. Schrodinger's subs!
Supposedly we really really need those submarines, but the French deal dumped to make way for AUKUS was more likely to result in real subs. (see the second, older link below, it's like a bad review for the US SubCo on Canstar or whatever)
Now I am surprised to learn that more than 500 people work in the department of non-submarines. Perhaps not so surprising, they are miserable.
Not sure I believe we will ever see any subs from the US, Trump will just rip up the agreement and keep the money, I mean what's the AU government options in that situation? Leverage? We have none!
Trump will be long dead and buried by the time these subs are built, if they're built at all, which i would bet has an almost zero chance of happening.
Scummo the clown and his legacy, huh! It's funny how the ALP just followed along with this, i guess contracts were signed etc but i don't remember much of a fight. The same will happen when Dutton commences his nuclear power station builds, the ALP will finish them off, contracts have been signed etc. What are the ALP for again?
'The ultimate, hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently.' David Graeber
