Antinuclear

Bill lets UK/US “dump nuclear submarine waste here”

Ben Packam 6 May 24

The British company appointed to build Australia’s nuclear submarines says the government’s draft nuclear safety laws would allow the disposal in Australia of high -level radioactive wastes from UK submarines.

BAE Systems chief counsel made observation at committee hearing examining the government’s naval nuclear power safety bill, which is due to be pushed through Parliament after next week’s federal budget………….

Under questioing by Greens Senator David Shoebridge, BAE’s Peter Quinlivian agreed that the wording of the bill opened a pathway for the disposal of high-level British radioactive waste in Australia.

“The legislation as drafted is in language that would accommodate that scenario” he said.

Britain is yet to dispose of any of the nuclear submarines it has decommissioned since the 1980s. It estimates it won’t fully dispose of the boats, plus seven more dure to retire in coming years, until the late 2060s.

Mr Quinlivian said that BAE had not informed the British government of the prospects that Australia could legally dispose of its nuclear waste “because it didn’t immediately strike us”

The apparent loophole flies in the face of Australia’s reassurances that AUKUS won’t require us to become a dumping ground for other countries’ nuclear wastes.

Liberal Senator David Fawcett asked Defence officials in the April 22 committee hearing whether the bill could be amended to avoid unintended consequences, something that the government is understood to be open to.

In a written response, Defence conceded that a tightening of the bill’s language could be needed. It said specifying the “disposal” of only “Australian submarine” nuclear waste would be consistent with government policy, but the government would have to “carefully consider any amendment which excluded the possibility of regulatory control of the management of low level radioactive waste from UK or US submarines……………….

The Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety agency is poised to declare a site at the HMAS Stirling naval base off Perth as a low level radioactive waste management facility, but a decision on where to store high level waste from Australia’s planned nuclear submarines is years if not decades away

Senator Shoebridge said that British bureaucrats were almost certainly “rubbing their hands together at the prospect of the Albanese government being foolish enough to pass this bill”

“Minister Marles has now been embarrassed by not only his own department but the very people he signed up to make the nuclear subs” he said.

The Senate standing committee on foreign affairs defence and trade is to release its report on the Australian Naval Nuclear Power Safety Bill 2023 on May 11.

May 6, 2024 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international, wastes