Antinuclear

Nuclear not an option for next generation of submarines BY:PAUL DIBB :The Australian  

• January 18, 2013  

LATER this year, the government will make a decision to narrow the choice for Australia’s future submarines. Contrary to opinions expressed in The Weekend Australian (“Past sub mistakes make a case for going nuclear”, January 5-6) the preferred option will certainly not be a nuclear submarine.

And – contrary to recent views in other media – whichever submarines we choose, they will not be built overseas.

So why not get American nuclear submarines? As the Minister for Defence Materiel, Jason Clare, has noted, the US has never exported or leased a naval nuclear reactor. The US will not simply hand over sensitive nuclear military knowledge, even to its close ally……

My understanding is that at the highest levels, the US has indicated very firmly to us that it prefersAustralia to have conventional submarines that can go places and do things that large nuclear submarines cannot do so easily. That was certainly my experience with Australian covert submarine operations in the Cold War……

Whichever submarine we choose, I do not believe we should calculate the number of boats we require based on highly unlikely scenarios of war with China. That was the fatal flaw in the 2009 Defence white paper. We require submarines optimised for our own strategic requirements, which means an operational area extending from the eastern Indian Ocean to the South China Sea and defending our vast maritime approaches.