The nuclear-powered submarine crisis
Tim Deere-Jones , 11th August 2025
The full Report “The British experience with nuclear-powered submarines: lessons for Australia” has been written for Friends of the Earth Australia by British scientist Tim Deere-Jones here.
Dr. Jim Green, national nuclear campaigner with Friends of the Earth Australia, said:
“The report reveals disturbing patterns of unacceptable safety risks, an appalling lack of transparency, cost-blowouts and delays.
“None of the issues raised in Tim Deere-Jones’ report have been adequately addressed in the Australian context. Indeed a federal EPBC Act assessment absurdly precluded nuclear accident impact assessments as ‘out of scope’. If those vital issues are addressed at all, it will be by a new, non-independent military regulator ‒ a blatant, deliberate breach of the fundamental principle of regulatory independence.
“The Australian government must immediately initiate a thorough, independent review of the AUKUS submarine project and this report should be an important input into that inquiry.”
The Report author Mr. Deere-Jones said:
“The British experience with nuclear submarines reveals a litany of safety risks, cost blowouts and delays. It can confidently be predicted that these problems will beset the AUKUS submarine programme.”
“Operational risks include radiological pollution of marine and coastal environments and wildlife; risks of radioactivity doses to coastal populations; and the serious risk of dangerous collisions between civilian vessels and nuclear submarines, especially in the approaches to busy naval and civilian sea ways and fishing grounds.
“Ominously, the problems seem to be worsening.”
Australia’s F-35 exports a “facilitation of war crimes”: US expert.
Following Sydney’s huge protest against Israel’s killing and starvation of Palestinians in Gaza, the federal government has doubled down on its misinformation about Australia’s arms exports to Israel
Undue Influence, Michelle Fahy and Elizabeth Minter, Aug 17, 2025
The Labor government’s word games continue as it tries to persuade an increasingly sceptical public that Australia’s hands are clean when it comes to complicity in Israel’s genocidal war against the Palestinian people.
An expert on US arms exports has given short shrift to the Albanese government’s misleading mantras, telling ABC radio last weekend that Australia was facilitating war crimes by exporting F-35 parts and components to Israel.
When asked how he would describe the Australian military’s recent direct supply of F-35 parts to Israel, former US State Department official Joshua Paul said: “It’s directly a facilitation of war crimes. There’s no question about it, to my mind.”
Mr Paul made international headlines in 2023 as the first US official to resign publicly in protest over the Biden administration’s policy of expediting weaponry to Israel for its current war on Gaza, stating that America knew the weapons were to be used to commit human rights violations. Mr Paul was director of congressional and public affairs at the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, a US State Department agency that works closely with the Pentagon on weapons transfers.
Defence Minister Marles squirms under scrutiny
Also last weekend, on ABC TV’s Insiders, Defence Minister Richard Marles criticised what he labelled “misinformation” about Australia’s arms exports to Israel. Yet he refused to answer basic questions on the topic, resorting repeatedly to the government’s discredited mantra that Australia is not supplying weapons to Israel.
Mr Marles also passed the buck for his role in personally approving Australia’s continued export of F-35 parts and components, deflecting responsibility for the F-35 global supply chain onto prime manufacturer, Lockheed Martin.
Without providing any justification, Mr Marles claimed that Australia’s F-35 exports presented a “very different question” and were a “separate issue” from other arms exports.
Australia’s F-35 exports cannot be separated out from the overarching question of Australia’s arms exports to Israel during its genocidal war on Gaza.
The Defence Department has stated that more than 75 Australian companies have contributed to the F-35 global supply chain, which has been working overtime – at “breakneck speed” – for almost two years to increase spare part supply rates to ensure Israel’s F-35s remain operational.
In her June report, From economy of occupation to economy of genocide, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese, named Lockheed Martin and the members of its F-35 supply chain as enhancing Israel’s ability to sustain its genocide of Palestinian people.
Mr Marles’ claims are also at odds with a significant UN statement last year: ‘States and companies must end arms transfers to Israel immediately or risk responsibility for human rights violations’, which named 11 multinationals, including Lockheed Martin and BAE Systems. These companies, by sending weapons, parts, components, and ammunition to Israeli forces, risk being complicit in serious violations of international human rights and international humanitarian laws, the statement said.
UK-based BAE Systems is one of Lockheed Martin’s three major partners in the F-35 supply chain. Its Australian subsidiary is also involved in supplying parts and components.
Australia’s export of F-35 parts and components into the supply chain is essential to the assembly of new aircraft and the maintenance and operation of the global fleet, including Israel’s F-35s.
Australia is the sole global source of some F-35 parts and components including, for example, the high-tech mechanism that opens and closes the weapons bay doors, enabling Israel to drop bombs on Gaza.
Despite this, foreign minister Penny Wong repeated in the Senate last month the ludicrous assertion she and Richard Marles first aired last year that the Australian-made parts and components in the world’s most lethal fighter jet are “non-lethal”. (Watch SBS News clip.)………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Could Australia make a difference?
Undue Influence last year reported comments by the head of the US-based F-35 joint program office, Lieutenant General Michael Schmidt, that the just-in-time F-35 global supply situation was “too risky”.
Despite claims from Mr Marles and Ms Wong that Australia has no power to make any impact on Israel’s military activities in Gaza, Josh Paul’s insights reinforce the fact that Australia could make a difference, should it have the courage to do so.
Australia could announce it will cease its export of F-35 parts and components unless or until the other member nations of the F-35 consortium agree to cease exporting to Israel. https://undueinfluence.substack.com/p/australias-f-35-exports-a-facilitation?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=297295&post_id=171175147&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Calls for Transparency Over Serious Nuclear Incident at Faslane
By Chris Martin, 14 Aug 2025, https://argyllbute24.co.uk/calls-for-transparency-over-serious-nuclear-incident-at-faslane/
THE Ministry of Defence (MoD) is facing calls to disclose details of a serious nuclear incident at HMNB Clyde, Faslane, between 1 January and 22 April this year.
Classified as Category A – the MoD’s most serious level – the event reportedly posed no risk to the public or environment.
Faslane, on Gare Loch in Argyll and Bute, houses the UK’s nuclear submarines, including Vanguard-class vessels armed with Trident missiles.
In a parliamentary response to SNP MP Dave Doogan, defence minister Maria Eagle confirmed multiple incidents at Faslane and nearby RNAD Coulport, but refused to detail Category A or B events, citing national security concerns.
Renewed alarm follows a Guardian/Ferret investigation revealing radioactive water leaked into Loch Long from Coulport in 2019 due to faulty pipes, with a six-year secrecy battle over the case. The Scottish Environment Protection Agency deemed the discharges “of no regulatory concern”.
SNP deputy leader Keith Brown has demanded an “urgent explanation”, warning nuclear weapons are “poorly maintained” and threaten safety, communities, and the environment.
The MoD insists it handles radioactive substances “safely and securely” and that none of the incidents caused harm or radiological impact, reaffirming support for the UK’s nuclear deterrent.
More on this story in next week’s Observer
Government-funded nuclear is fine for Dan Tehan, but not renewables or climate initiatives
Rachel Williamson, ReNeweconomy, Aug 14, 2025
From the party that promised seven taxpayer funded nuclear reactors, now comes a call to enforce pure free-market economics on all things renewable and climate related, at least according to new shadow energy minister Dan Tehan.
Tehan’s speech to the Carbon Market Institute’s emissions summit in Melbourne on Thursday was a pitch for renewable energy and climate initiatives to be turned over to competitive markets.
But mentions of the Coalition’s former plans for state-funded nuclear power plants, or the removal of the $14.5 billion in annual fossil fuel subsidies were conspicuously absent.
And while Tehan was keen to adopt Ross Garnaut’s contention that Australia will struggle to achieve its 82 per cent renewable energy target by 2030, he did not also reference in his markets-led speech Garnaut’s contention that oligopolistic gas participants are using their market power to drive up prices.
Playing to his role as a free market champion, Tehan opened his talk with a gentle neg at the audience about why he thinks the entire premise of the conference founder is wrong.
“I called it the so-called carbon market, for a reason,” he told the crowd, saying markets are defined by transparency.
“Australians deserve clarity about costs, trade-offs and pathways in our energy transition. At the moment, this has been hidden, and we need to know why.”
In a speech that repeatedly referenced the cost blowout of the VNI West transmission line, called for CSIRO to “release its code, data and assumptions in full” for the GenCost report, and demanded to know how much the beneficiaries of electric vehicle incentives are earning, Tehan’s pitch was that governments are too involved in the economy-wide changes currently underway to reduce emissions. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Currently, the Coalition still can’t agree on what kind of energy they’d like in Australia.
Two weeks ago, Barnaby Joyce and Matt Canavan from the Nationals were again calling for more coal fired power stations to be built, and last week Liberal frontbencher Andrew Hastie came out against a too-quick transition from fossil fuels,
Energy is one of the five issues Liberal leader Sussan Ley has put up for negotiation.
Tehan listed eight different areas where the federal government should bring in more market-based measures rather than an approach marked by “ideology, energy constraint and emissions reduction through a high cost de-industrialisation”……………………………………………https://reneweconomy.com.au/government-funded-nuclear-is-fine-for-dan-tehan-but-not-renewables-or-climate-initiatives/
It’s not ‘Who lost Ukraine?’ It’s ‘Who destroyed Ukraine?
Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL , 15 Aug 25
When Mao won the Chinese civil war in 1949, adding China to the USSR in the roster of commie countries, the US war hawks of that era excoriated the Truman administration for ‘losing’ China’. Their unhinged claim was that the commie filled State Department made Mao’s inevitable takeover possible. That helped fuel Sen. Joe McCarthy’s equally unhinged campaign to smoke out all those imagined commies in the Truman administration a year later.
A whiff of that 1949 anti commie hysteria is playing out on mainstream media ahead of Friday’s sit down between President Trump and Russian President Putin seeking a ceasefire and end to this disastrous war destroying Ukraine.
Morning Joe Scarborough this morning pondered whether Trump will cave to evil Putin’s Ukraine dismembership demands to achieve the peace that might garner him a Nobel Peace Prize. Yep, Moring Joe laid out the ‘Who lost Ukraine’ meme on Trump to prepare us for the onslaught of anti-Trump, anti-Russian hysteria sure to follow if a settlement reflecting the reality of Ukraine’s dismembership is inked in Alaska tomorrow.
A settlement is only possible if a US/Russia settlement verifies the battlefield reality. Ukraine’s military is teetering on collapse with over a million dead cannon fodder and 4 oblasts gone to Russia forever. If Trump accomplishes peace…which is far from likely, the blame game will focus on Trump who ‘lost’ Ukraine which will end up as a greatly diminished rump state dependent on US/European life support for years to come.
Historians instead should begin with the 6 administrations preceding Trump’s second term 2.0: George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump 1.0 and most grievously Joe Biden. H.W. Bush, Clinton, W. Bush, Obama, Trump 1.0 and Biden all promoted NATO expansion into Ukraine and dismissed all Russian security pleas that such expansion was a Red Line Russia would view as an existential threat.
While his predecessors put Ukraine on the road to destruction, Joe Biden essentially pulled the trigger on a war Ukraine had no chance of winning. Putin tried to avoid invading. He saw Ukraine massing 60,000 elite troops on the Donbas border to polish off the Ukrainian separatists there seeking independence and safety from Kyiv neo fascists. His plea of December 21 2021 was dismissed out of hand. Biden told Putin that Russia’s security interests, which included autonomy for Ukrainian separatists as well as a neutral Ukraine not in NATO, were ‘not subject to discussion whatsoever.’
Biden knew that response would provoke a Russian invasion. But Biden miscalculated that US weapons combined with draconian Russian sanctions would result in a Vietnam style defeat for Russia, possibly even the overthrow of President Putin.
So here we are three years, eight months later with Putin, not Trump holding all the cards in tomorrow’s negotiation. Trump knows the correct outcome is settling on Russia’s terms: no return of Ukraine territory, no NATO for Ukraine and a demilitarized Ukraine that can never attack inside Russia territory again. He also knows he’ll be branded by America’s ravenous war hawks as ‘The man who lost Ukraine’ should he end the war.
Nobody lost Ukraine. But we now know who destroyed Ukraine. The only question to be answered is…How severely Ukraine will be destroyed before the guns go silent.
Serious nuclear incident’ took place at Scottish Navy base.
14 Aug 25, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/08/14/serious-nuclear-incident-clyde-faslane-navy-base/
MoD admits ‘Category A’ event at HMNB Clyde which will raise concerns about maintenance of Trident nuclear submarines
‘Potentially serious’ event at HMNB Clyde prompts concerns about maintenance of Trident submarines
Category A events are defined as those which carry “actual or high potential for radioactive release to the environment”.
The revelation will raise serious concerns about how the Trident nuclear submarines in Scotland are being maintained. It is also likely to prompt questions over transparency and why the incident was not known about until now.
HMNB Clyde houses every Royal Navy submarine, including the Vanguard-class vessels which are armed with Trident missiles.
On Wednesday afternoon, the SNP demanded an urgent explanation from the Labour Government in Westminster over a “catalogue of failures” including separate contamination nearby.
The MoD declined to offer specific details of the incident, which was first reported by the Helensburgh Advertiser. This means it was unclear if any radiation was leaked into the environment or if there was a risk of this taking place.
The incident is not the first category A incident to take place at Faslane, with the MoD having reported two such cases from 2006 to 2007 and a third that took place in 2023.
The incident was disclosed in a written parliamentary answer by Maria Eagle, the procurement minister, after she was asked to provide the number of Nuclear Site Event Reports (NSERs) at the Coulport and Faslane naval bases.
She said there had been one category A event at Faslane between Jan 1 and April 22, two category B, seven category C and four category D. A further five events were deemed to be “below scale”, meaning they were less serious.
Nearby Coulport, where the UK’s nuclear missiles and warheads are stored, had four category C and nine category D events over the same period.
Ms Eagle told Dave Doogan, the SNP MP who tabled the question: “I cannot provide specific detail for the events as disclosure would, or would be likely to, prejudice the capability, effectiveness or security of any relevant forces.
“I can assure the honourable member that none of the events listed in question 49938 caused harm to the health of any member of staff or to any member of the public and none have resulted in any radiological impact to the environment.”
She also said that NSERs “are raised to foster a robust safety culture that learns from experience, whether that is equipment failures, human error, procedural failings, documentation shortcoming or near-misses”.
Category B incidents are defined as having “actual or high potential for a contained release within [a] building or submarine or unplanned exposure to radiation”.
Category C incidents have “moderate potential for future release”, while category D incidents are unlikely to prompt any release but “may contribute towards an adverse trend”.
Radioactive water leak
It emerged last week that radioactive water from the Coulport and Faslane bases, which are situated near Glasgow, was allowed to leak into the sea after several old pipes burst.
The substance was released into Loch Long because the Royal Navy inadequately maintained a network of around 1,500 pipes on the base, a regulator found.
The Scottish Environment Protection Agency, the pollution watchdog north of the border, found up to half the components at the base were beyond their design life.
David Cullen, a nuclear weapons expert at the Basic defence think tank, said attempts to hide previous serious incidents from the public had been “outrageous”.
Mr Cullen said: “The MoD is almost 10 years into a nearly £2bn infrastructure programme at Faslane and Coulport, and yet they apparently didn’t have a proper asset management system as recently as 2022.
“This negligent approach is far too common in the nuclear weapons programme, and is a direct consequence of a lack of oversight.”
Government accused of ‘cover-up’
Keith Brown, the deputy leader of the SNP, accused the Government of a cover-up in relation to the incident at Faslane.
Mr Brown said: “Nuclear weapons are an ever-present danger and this new information is deeply worrying.
“With repeated reports of serious incidents at Faslane and now confirmed radioactive contamination in Loch Long, it’s clear these weapons are not only poorly maintained but are a direct threat to our environment, our communities, and our safety.
“Worse still, the Labour Government is refusing to provide any details about the category A incident, or the full extent of the contamination, including who could potentially be affected.”
The SNP has vowed to scrap Trident, despite consensus in Westminster and among defence experts that the world is now more dangerous than at any point since the Cold War.
The accusations over a cover-up come after The Telegraph disclosed last month that Britain had secretly offered asylum to almost 24,000 Afghan soldiers and their families.
The Government earmarked £7bn to relocate Afghans to the UK over five years after they were caught up in the most serious data breach in history.
Despite enormous costs to the taxpayer, the breach was kept secret from the public for 683 days by two successive governments after the first use of a super-injunction by ministers.
An MoD spokesman said: “We place the upmost importance on handling radioactive substances safely and securely. Nuclear Site Event Reports demonstrate our robust safety culture and commitment to learn from experience.
“The incidents posed no risk to the public and did not result in any radiological impact to the environment. It is factually incorrect to suggest otherwise. Our Government backs our nuclear deterrent as the ultimate guarantor of our national security.
The MoD said it was unable to disclose details of individual incidents for “national security reasons”. However, it is understood all the NSERs were categorised as having a “low safety significance”.
Not the corporate nuclear news -this week
Some bits of good news – Superpowers united on a shared green energy vision. Japanese ‘Rental Grandmother’ Service Provides Much-Needed and Much-Loved Purpose for Older WomenUK’s Rarest Breeding Birds Raise Chicks for First Time in Six Years
TOP STORIES.
Remembering Hiroshima 80 years on – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgU-Vc958-k
Jeremy Corbyn: Nuclear Disarmament Now.
Why no Hollywood movie on Nagasaki A Bombing?
As Netanyahu moves toward full takeover of Gaza, Israel faces a crisis of international credibility.
Trump’s Suicidal Nuclear Brinksmanship.The new space race: How the US, China, and Russia are all vying to be the first to build a nuclear reactor on the MOON.
Environment and health. The Lancet Countdown on health and plastics.
AUSTRALIA. Australia to chart its own course on Palestinian statehood, without Trump’s say-so.
Dare To Hope. Julian Assange Joins Historic Anti-Genocide March Across Sydney’s Harbour Bridge.
The lethal legacy of Aukus nuclear submarines will remain for millennia – and there’s no plan to deal with it. The AUKUS Submarine Deal is Dead. AUKUS delusions– More rivets pop in submarine drama.
Those left behind: The long shadow of Britain’s nuclear testing in Western Australia.
NUCLEAR ITEMS.
| ARTS and CULTURE. Patrick Lawrence: Yes, It’s a Genocide. |
| ATROCITIES. The Genocidal Partnership of Israel and the United States.1,500 Killed While Seeking Aid in Gaza Since May: UN. |
| CLIMATE. Europe’s electricity system tested by heatwaves as air-conditioning use soars – nuclear power plants affected- ALSO AT https://nuclear-news.net/2025/08/07/2-a-europes-electricity-system-tested-by-heatwaves-as-air-conditioning-use-soars-nuclear-power-plants-affected/ |
ECONOMICS. EDF shifts nuclear strategy to domestic projects.
How industry is positioning itself for the giant Golden Dome budget.
EMPLOYMENT. Miliband’s Nuclear Quango Chief In Line for £200,000 for Working Three Days a Week. Sellafield nuclear plant contractors to strike. Sizewell C to give jobs to hundreds of ex-offenders.
ETHICS and RELIGION. The Satanic Nature of the Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The Christian Zionist View of Foreign Policy Is Holy War. Chris Hedges: The Gaza Riviera.
To Future Generations: They Knew-They All Knew What Was Happening In Gaza.
| HEALTH. The Bombs Still Ticking.“Memories that do not heal”: the legacy of uranium mining at Laguna Pueblo. |
| HISTORY. Hiroshima’s fading legacy: the race to secure survivors’ memories amid a new era of nuclear brinkmanship.SEEDS OF PEACE -AUGUST 2025.Atomic testament: Yoshito Matsushige and the first photos of Hiroshima’s nuclear toll. |
| MEDIA. When the Press Becomes the Enemy: The Erosion of Media Independence in Trump’s America. YouTube bans prominent Zelensky critic. |
| OPPOSITION to NUCLEAR . No Nukes for Power, Posturing or Destruction. |
POLITICS. Weekly Briefing: A tipping point for Israel’s legitimacy.
POLITICS INTERNATIONAL and DIPLOMACY. Nuclear Roulette.
80 years since Hiroshima and Nagasaki — time for a nuclear-free world for a peaceful, sustainable future.
Zelensky and the EU increasingly desperate over the inevitable outcome of the conflict.
As the world hurtles ever closer to nuclear oblivion, where is the opposition?
| SAFETY. Trump’s Nuclear Energy Overhaul Sparks Alarms Over Safety.Fire safety improvements required at Dungeness A. |
| SECRETS and LIES. Ukraine hacks Russian submarine as Moscow expands Arctic presence.Microsoft helping Israel spy on millions of Palestinians since 2021: Report. |
| SPACE. EXPLORATION, WEAPONS.Who’s Protecting the Moon? We may not survive a nuclear war but some plan to carry on. Nasa to put nuclear reactor on the Moon by 2030 – US media. A NASA Nuclear Reactor On The Moon? Bold Proposal Is Unfeasible By 2030– Here’s Why. From boots to orbits: Army develops space skills amid growing battlefield reliance on satellites. |
| SPINBUSTER. 80 Years of Lies: The US Finally Admits It Knew It Didn’t Need to Bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki. |
| TECHNOLOGY. A Second CANDU Reactor for Point Lepreau? Let’s Ponder. |
| WASTES. Tepco wraps up latest round of treated water release in Fukushima. |
WAR and CONFLICT.
Israeli military plans to occupy Gaza City in major escalation of war. Israel Preparing To Escalate Military Offensive in Gaza. Occupation and Slaughter: Netanyahu and Taking Over Gaza.
Trump and Zelensky, two cornered rats with no way out of Ukraine catastrophe.
Threat of Nuclear War Is Rising, But Scientists Say the Public Can Change That.
WEAPONS and WEAPONS SALES.
No more Hiroshimas. Hiroshima anniversary: mayor says Ukraine and Middle East crises show world ignoring nuclear ‘tragedies.
Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) Expands Nuclear Bomb Production, Rejects Cleanup, Still Plans to Release Tritium.
$10 billion, 10 year US Army contract elevates Palantir to defense contracting royalty.
Pete Hegseth Doesn’t Want to Talk About Golden Dome
‘Disarm now’: Anti-nuke advocate’s message to world leaders at Pine Gap protest.
Following the breakdown of a nuclear treaty, an antinuclear advocate wants world leaders to hear a message she’s made from the doors of a top secret Territory spy base.
12 Aug 25,https://www.ntnews.com.au/journalists/gera-kazakov
An antinuclear ambassador for a Nobel prize winning group has delivered a message to world leaders at the edge of a Red Centre spy base, days after Russia pulled out of an arms treaty following an American missile test in the Top End.
ICAN ambassador Karina Lester was one of a dozen demonstrators who gathered at the edge of the Pine Gap Joint Defence Facility restricted area on Sunday, where she told world leaders to “disarm now” when speaking with this masthead.
“Get rid of your weapons. Lets fund and focus on world peace, not arm up and test missiles,” she said.
Ms Lester’s visit to the border of the Pine Gap restricted zone on Hatt Rd comes a day after she gave a speech at the sixth Yami Lester memorial event in Alice Springs – an event named after her father.
Mr Lester, a Yankunytjatjara elder who died in 2017, was blinded by the British nuclear tests in northern South Australia in the 1950s.
He was blinded as a child, and spent his life advocating against nuclear weapons – a mantle his daughter has taken up with ICAN, who won a Nobel Peace Prize in 2017 for their antinuclear advocacy.
The group got to the edge of the Pine Gap restricted at about 4.30pm Sunday, where they were again met with a police blockade at where the restricted zone begins.
Two unmarked Toyota LandCruisers followed the convoy to their meeting place, and a police drone was also observed overhead.
The group heard from speakers who opposed the US-run base, with members of the crowd holding signs reading “Yankee go home” while others held Palestinian flags.
At the conclusion of the demonstration, the group gathered for a photo and chanted “land back, close Pine Gap” while various media outlets filmed and photographed them.
Federal NSW Greens senator David Shoebridge was also billed to be at the Pine Gap demonstration on Sunday, but pulled out due to covid, this masthead understands.
The Greens defence and foreign affairs spokesman said the political party has opposed the US-run base “for decades” but did not comment on why he was unable to come on Sunday when asked by this masthead.
The lethal legacy of Aukus nuclear submarines will remain for millennia – and there’s no plan to deal with it.
Ben Doherty, 10 Aug 25, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/10/the-lethal-legacy-of-aukus-nuclear-submarines-will-remain-for-millennia-and-theres-no-plan-to-deal-with-it
“None of the leaders who announced Aukus are in power any more,” he tells the Guardian. “One hundred thousand years from now, who knows what the world looks like, but Australia, whatever is here then, will still be dealing with the consequences of that high-level waste.”
Australia’s future nuclear submarines will produce highly radioactive waste, and allies in the UK and the US still don’t have a safe place to store their own.
In the cold deep waters of Rosyth Harbour lie the dormant hulks of Britain’s decommissioned nuclear submarines.
One of the shells lashed to the dock here is HMS Dreadnought, Britain’s first nuclear-powered submarine. It was commissioned in 1963, retired in 1980, and has spent decades longer tied to a harbour than it ever did in service. The spent nuclear fuel removed from its reactor remains in temporary storage.
For decades the UK has sought a solution to the nuclear waste its fleet of submarines generates. After decades of fruitless search there are “ongoing discussions” but still no place for radioactive waste to be permanently stored.
Similarly, in the US – the naval superpower which controls a vast landmass and which has run nuclear submarines since the 1950s – there is still no permanent storage for its submarines’ nuclear waste.
More than a hundred decommissioned radioactive reactors sit in an open-air pit in Washington state, on a former plutonium production site the state’s government describes as “one of the most contaminated nuclear sites in the world”.
This is what becomes of nuclear-powered submarines at the end of their comparatively short life.
A nuclear-powered submarine can expect a working life of three decades: the spent fuel of a submarine powered by highly enriched uranium can remain dangerously radioactive for millennia. Finland is building an underground waste repository to be sealed for 100,000 years.
For Australia’s proposed nuclear-powered submarine fleet there is, at present, nowhere for that radioactive spent fuel to go. As a non-nuclear country – and a party to the non-proliferation treaty – Australia has no history of, and no capacity for, managing high-level nuclear waste.
But Australia is not alone: there is no operational site anywhere on Earth for the permanent storage of high-level nuclear waste.
‘Australia shall be responsible … ’
Documents released under freedom of information laws show that, beginning in the 2050s, each of Australia’s decommissioned Aukus submarines will generate both intermediate- and high-level radioactive waste: a reactor compartment and components “roughly the size of a four-wheel drive”; and spent nuclear fuel “roughly the size of a small hatchback”.
The Australian Submarine Agency says the exact amount of high-level waste Australia will be responsible for is “classified”.
Because Australia’s submarines will run on highly enriched uranium (as opposed to low enriched uranium – which can power a submarine but cannot be used in a warhead) the waste left behind is not only toxic for millennia, it is a significant proliferation risk: highly enriched uranium can be used to make weapons.
The eight nuclear-powered submarines proposed for Australia’s navy will require roughly four tonnes of highly enriched uranium to fuel their sealed reactor units: enough for about 160 nuclear warheads on some estimates.
The spent fuel will require military-grade security to safeguard it.
The problems raised by Australia’s critics of Aukus are legion: the agreement’s $368bn cost; the lopsided nature of the pact in favour of the US; sclerotic rates of shipbuilding in the US and the UK, raising concerns that Australia’s nuclear submarines might never arrive; the loss of Australian sovereignty over those boats if they do arrive; the potential obsolescence of submarine warfare; and whether Aukus could make Australia a target in an Indo-Pacific conflict.
All are grave concerns for a middle power whose security is now more tightly bound by Aukus to an increasingly unreliable “great and powerful friend”.
But the most intractable concern is what will happen to the nuclear waste.
It is a problem that will outlive the concept of Australia as a nation-state, that will extend millennia beyond the comprehension of anybody reading these words, that will still be a problem when Australia no longer exists.
And it cannot be exported.
The Aukus agreement expressly states that dealing with the submarines’ nuclear waste is solely Australia’s responsibility.
“Australia shall be responsible for the management, disposition, storage, and disposal of any spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste … including radioactive waste generated through submarine operations, maintenance, decommissioning, and disposal,” Article IV, subclause D of the treaty states.
As well, should anything go wrong, at any point, with Australia’s nuclear submarines, the risk is all on Australia.
Australia shall indemnify … the United States and the United Kingdom against any liability, loss, costs, damage or injury … resulting from Nuclear Risks connected with the design, manufacture, assembly, transfer, or utilization of any Material or Equipment, including Naval Nuclear Propulsion Plants,” subclause E states.
“‘Nuclear Risks’,” the treaty states, “means those risks attributable to the radioactive, toxic, explosive, or other hazardous properties of material.”
‘Decide and defend’
An emeritus professor at Griffith University’s school of environment and science, Ian Lowe, tells Guardian Australia that the government’s regime for storing low-level nuclear waste is a “shambles”. He says the government’s “decide and defend” model for choosing a permanent waste storage site has consistently failed.
“You currently have radioactive waste from Lucas Heights, from Fishermans Bend, and from nuclear medicine and research all around Australia, just stored in cupboards and filing cabinets and temporary sheds,” Lowe says.
“The commonwealth government has made three attempts to establish a national facility – it’s a repository if you’re in favour of it, it’s a waste dump if you’re opposed – and on every occasion there’s been local opposition, particularly opposition from Indigenous landowners, and on each of those three occasions … the proposal has collapsed.”
Most of Australia’s low-level and intermediate nuclear waste – much of it short-lived medical waste – is stored at the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation facility in Lucas Heights in outer Sydney. Lowe says the nuclear safety regulator, ARPANSA, does a commendable job in protecting the public but the facility was never intended to be permanent.
Australia has been searching for a permanent site for nuclear waste for nearly three decades.
Its approach – derided by Lowe as “decide and defend”: where government chooses a place to put radioactive waste and then defends the decision against community opposition – has failed in Woomera, in central South Australia, in the late 1990s, then Muckaty station in the Northern Territory, then on farmland near Kimba, again in SA.
The federal court ruled against the Kimba plan in 2023, after a challenge from the traditional owners, the Barngarla people, who had been excluded from consultation.
Lowe, the author of Long Half-Life: The Nuclear Industry in Australia, says the complexities and risks of storing high-level nuclear waste from a submarine are factors greater than the low- and intermediate-level waste Australia now manages.
“The waste from nuclear submarines is much nastier and much more intractable,” he says. “And because they use weapons-grade highly enriched uranium there is the greater security issue of needing to make sure that not only do you need to protect against that waste irradiating people and the environment, you must also ensure that malevolent actors, who have in mind a malicious use of highly enriched uranium, can’t get their hands on it.”
Australia’s decision to use highly enriched uranium to power its submarines, as opposed to low enriched uranium (reactors would need refuelling each decade), is a “classic case of kicking the can down the road and creating a problem for future generations”, Lowe argues.
“In the short term, it’s better to have highly enriched uranium and a sealed reactor that you never need to maintain during the life of the submarine. But at the end of the life of the submarine, you have a much more serious problem.”
The high-level nuclear waste from Australia’s submarines will be hazardous for “hundreds of thousands of years,” Lowe says.
“There are arguments about whether it’s 300,000 or 500,000 or 700,000 years, but we’re talking a period at least as long as humans have existed as an identifiably separate species. The time horizon for political decision makers is typically four or five years: the time horizon of what we’re talking about is four or five hundred thousand years, so there’s an obvious disconnect.”
Inside ‘Trench 94’
The US and the UK have run nuclear-powered (and nuclear-armed) submarines for decades.
In the UK, 23 nuclear submarines have been decommissioned, none have been dismantled, 10 remained nuclear-fuelled. Most are sitting in water in docks in Scotland and on England’s south-west coast.
The first submarine to be disposed of – the cold war-era HMS Swiftsure was retired from service in 1992 – will be finally dismantled in 2026. Keeping decommissioned nuclear subs afloat and secure costs the UK upwards of £30m a year.
There is still no site for permanent storage of their radioactive waste: there has been “progress and ongoing discussions”, the defence minister, Lord Coaker, told the House of Lords last year, but still no site.
The UK has about 700,000 cubic metres of toxic waste, roughly the volume of 6,000 doubledecker buses. Much of it is stored at Sellafield in Cumbria, a site described by the Office for Nuclear Regulation says as “one of the most complex and hazardous nuclear sites in the world”.
In the US, contaminated reactors from more than 100 retired submarines are stored in “Trench 94” – a massive open pit at the Hanford nuclear site in Washington state. Spent nuclear fuel is also sent to the Idaho National Laboratory and sites in South Carolina and Colorado. Hanford is designed to last 300 years but the site has a chequered history of pollution and radiation leaks. Washington state describes it as “one of the most contaminated nuclear sites in the world”.
Finland is the first country to devise a permanent solution. It is building an underground facility 450 metres below ground, buried in the bedrock of the island of Olkiluoto.
The Onkalo – Finnish for cave or cavity – facility has taken more than 40 years to build (the site was chosen by government in 1983) and has cost €1bn. It is now undergoing trials.
‘A Trojan horse’
In March 2023 Australia’s defence minister, Richard Marles, said high-level nuclear waste would be stored on “defence land, current or future”, raising the prospect that a site could be identified and then declared “defence land”. A process for establishing a site would be publicly revealed “within 12 months”, he said. That process has not been announced nor a site identified.
Australia will require a site for high-level nuclear waste from the “early 2050s”, according to the Australian Submarine Agency. Senate estimates heard last year that there have been no costings committed for the storage of spent fuel. And preparing a site for storing high-level radioactive waste for millennia will take decades.
Guardian Australia sent a series of questions to Marles’ office about the delayed process for selecting a site. A spokesperson for the Australian Submarine Agency responded, saying: “The government is committed to the highest levels of nuclear stewardship, including the safe and secure disposal of waste.
“As the Government has said, the disposal of high-level radioactive waste won’t be required until the 2050s, when Australia’s first nuclear-powered submarine is expected to be decommissioned.”
The spokesperson confirmed that Australia would be responsible for all of the spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste generated from the Aukus submarines: it would not have responsibility for intermediate- or high-level radioactive waste – including spent fuel – from the US, UK or any other country. No permanent storage site had been identified for low-level radioactive waste, which would include waste from foreign submarines.
The government has consistently said it will engage extensively with industry, nuclear experts and affected communities to build a social licence for a permanent storage site.
But Dave Sweeney of the Australian Conservation Foundation says he has seen little evidence of genuine effort to build social licence.
The leaders who signed the Aukus deal – and those who continue to support it – have failed to comprehend the consequences beyond their political careers, he says.
“None of the leaders who announced Aukus are in power any more,” he tells the Guardian. “One hundred thousand years from now, who knows what the world looks like, but Australia, whatever is here then, will still be dealing with the consequences of that high-level waste.”
Sweeney says the “opacity” of the decision-making around the Aukus agreement itself is compounded by fears that the deal could be only the beginning of a nuclear industry expansion in Australia.
“We see this as a Trojan horse to expanding, facilitating, empowering the nuclear industry, emboldening the nuclear industry everywhere,” he says. “It is creepy, controversial, costly, contaminating, and leading to vastly decreased security and options for regional and global peace.”
Beyond the astronomical cost of the submarine deal, its the true burden would be borne by innumerable future generations.
“We are talking thousands and thousands of years: it is an invisible pervasive pollutant and contaminant and the only thing that gets rid of it is time. And with the whole Aukus deal, that’s what we’re running out of.”
New report on British nuclear submarines should raise alarm bells across Australia.
Friends of the Earth Australia, 11 Aug 25, https://newshub.medianet.com.au/2025/08/new-report-on-british-nuclear-submarines-should-raise-alarm-bells-across-australia/113276/
A detailed new report on the British nuclear submarine experience should ring alarm bells across Australia. The report has been written for Friends of the Earth Australia by British scientist Tim Deere-Jones, who has a B.Sc. degree in Maritime Studies and has operated a Marine Pollution Research Consultancy since the 1980s.
Mr. Deere-Jones said:
“The British experience with nuclear submarines reveals a litany of safety risks, cost blowouts and delays. It can confidently be predicted that these problems will beset the AUKUS submarine programme.”
“Operational risks include radiological pollution of marine and coastal environments and wildlife; risks of radioactivity doses to coastal populations; and the serious risk of dangerous collisions between civilian vessels and nuclear submarines, especially in the approaches to busy naval and civilian sea ways and fishing grounds.
“Ominously, the problems seem to be worsening.”
Dr. Jim Green, national nuclear campaigner with Friends of the Earth Australia, said:
“The report reveals disturbing patterns of unacceptable safety risks, an appalling lack of transparency, cost-blowouts and delays.
“None of the issues raised in Tim Deere-Jones’ report have been adequately addressed in the Australian context. Indeed a federal EPBC Act assessment absurdly precluded nuclear accident impact assessments as ‘out of scope’. If those vital issues are addressed at all, it will be by a new, non-independent military regulator ‒ a blatant, deliberate breach of the fundamental principle of regulatory independence.
“The Australian government must immediately initiate a thorough, independent review of the AUKUS submarine project and this report should be an important input into that inquiry.”
The report, ‘The British experience with nuclear-powered submarines: lessons for Australia’, is online at https://nuclear.foe.org.au/nuclear-subs/ or direct download https://nuclear.foe.org.au/wp-content/uploads/Deere-Jones-nuclear-submarine-report-final-August-2025.pdf
Those left behind: The long shadow of Britain’s nuclear testing in Western Australia
WA TODAY, ByVictoria Laurie, August 10, 2025
son, a daughter and a grandson of Australian servicemen exposed to nuclear testing have made an emotional pilgrimage up to the remote Montebello Islands to capture details of an era with – literally and metaphorically – enduring fallout.
Paul Grace, Maxine Goodwin and Gary Blinco recently stood together in the ruins of a bomb command centre overlooking the scene of three British nuclear tests in the 1950s that few younger Australians have ever heard of.
As the world commemorates Japan’s wartime nuclear blasts in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the trio say Australians should not forget the impact of atomic tests conducted on West Australian soil in the 1950s, starting with Operation Hurricane in 1952 and followed by two more tests in Operation Mosaic in 1956. Other atomic tests at Emu Field and Maralinga bookended the Montebello series.
Grace, Goodwin and Blinco all know the tests left a family legacy of death or ill-health – and lingering contamination 70 years later on several islands. On a recent expedition up to the Montebello archipelago, 80 kilometres offshore from Onslow, the trio gathered documentary and archival material while filling gaps in their own family histories………………………
For Grace and Goodwin, the most poignant moment was when they stood on the tarmac at Onslow airport in the exact spot where his grandfather and her father posed for a photograph with No 86 Transport Wing Detachment RAAF, to commemorate the successful test of Britain’s first ever nuclear bomb detonation on October 3, 1952.
“They performed what they called ‘coastal monitoring sorties’ after testing, but that was code for looking for fallout – the British had promised that no fallout would reach the mainland.”
Grace’s grandfather wrote later: “As pilot of the aircraft, I would have been the most exposed crew member, being shielded only by the Perspex of the front and side windows. The navigator, radio operator and Mr Hale being in the body of the aircraft had, presumably, more protection.
“Further to the above, after leaving the atomic cloud, we spent approximately two more hours in a radioactive airplane (as proved by the Geiger-Counter check) during the return to Onslow, landing, parking and shut-down.”
Maxine Goodwin’s father died of lymphatic cancer aged 49, when she was 16.
“He would have been servicing contaminated aircraft, so my mother and I do believe his illness was the result of his participation in the nuclear tests,” she says…………………………………………….
……………………………………. a 2006 DVA study of Australian participants in British nuclear tests in Australia showed an increase in cancer deaths and cancer incidence (18 per cent and 23 per cent respectively) than would be expected in the general population.
“They tried to explain these figures away, but they are really quite damning,” says Paul Grace, an author whose book Operation Hurricane gives a detailed account of the events and personnel involved in UK nuclear testing in Australia.
The three descendants of nuclear veterans describe the Montebello Islands as haunting but beautiful. “Within the landscape, you’ve got an incredible number of Cold War artefacts lying around, what the British referred to as ‘target response items’,” says Grace………………………………………………………………………
The nuclear fallout was not limited to those servicemen involved. Still affected 70 years later are large tracts of land and seabed across the Montebello archipelago.
New research into plutonium levels in sediment on some islands have found elevated levels up to 4500 times greater than other parts of the WA coastline. The research by Edith Cowan University, released in June, was supported by the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency. Visitors are urged to spend no more than an hour on some islands.
Grace says the Montebello story is a cautionary tale of Australia’s over-eagerness to host Britain’s nuclear test series, and of UK authorities’ lack of safety and casual attitude toward radioactive drift.
“It forces you to question the wisdom of tying Australia’s defence to powerful allies, especially in the context of the current debate over AUKUS, where the benefits are vague and shifting and the costs will only become clear decades in the future,” she says.
It might seem like we are doing the same thing all over again.” https://www.watoday.com.au/national/western-australia/those-left-behind-the-long-shadow-of-britain-s-nuclear-testing-in-wa-20250808-p5mlj9.html
Australia to chart its own course on Palestinian statehood, without Trump’s say-so.
Trump’s return to the White House has already shifted global diplomatic currents, with several leaders recalibrating their positions to maintain favour. By declaring that Australia’s decision will not be subject to U.S. approval, Albanese is signalling a willingness to resist that pressure – even if it means copping criticism from one of the country’s most powerful media empires.
9 August 2025 Michael Taylor, https://theaimn.net/australia-to-chart-its-own-course-on-palestinian-statehood-without-trumps-say-so/
Australia’s decision on whether to recognise a Palestinian state will not be dictated by Washington – and that, apparently, was enough to attract howls of condemnation and disapproval from sections of the Murdoch media.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese confirmed this week that he was unlikely to consult with U.S. President Donald Trump before making any decision on recognition. It’s a simple case of Australia acting in Australia’s national interest, emphasising that the issue will be decided in Canberra, not in the White House.
The reaction from the Murdoch media was swift and fierce. Headlines and opinion columns framed Albanese’s stance as a diplomatic snub to a “key ally,” warning of potential damage to the Australia–U.S. relationship. The coverage fits a familiar pattern: when leaders diverge from U.S. policy – especially under a Republican president – Murdoch media frequently portrays it as reckless or unpatriotic.
At the heart of the dispute is a deeper question of sovereignty. Critics argue that Australia should stand firm on charting its own foreign policy, particularly on sensitive Middle East matters, which have been shaped for decades by complex international law and humanitarian concerns. Recognition of a Palestinian state has long been debated within Australia, with supporters citing the need for a two-state solution and opponents warning of diplomatic repercussions with Israel and the United States.
Trump’s return to the White House has already shifted global diplomatic currents, with several leaders recalibrating their positions to maintain favour. By declaring that Australia’s decision will not be subject to U.S. approval, Albanese is signalling a willingness to resist that pressure – even if it means copping criticism from one of the country’s most powerful media empires.
In a political environment where foreign policy is often filtered through the prism of domestic politics and media narratives, Albanese’s comments draw a sharp line: Australia will make its own call. The real question is whether the public sees that as principled independence – or unnecessary defiance.
Either way, the stance taps into a deeper tradition in Australian foreign policy: the belief that while alliances matter, sovereignty matters more. From Whitlam’s recognition of China to Howard’s refusal to sign the Kyoto Protocol, Australia has occasionally charted its own course against the preferences of powerful allies. Albanese’s decision – or even just his refusal to seek Trump’s blessing – may yet be remembered as another of those moments.
AUKUS delusions. More rivets pop in submarine drama.
by Rex Patrick | Aug 4, 2025 https://michaelwest.com.au/aukus-delusions-more-rivets-pop-in-submarine-drama/
Announcing a new one-sided subs-deal with the UK, resisting calls for a review, ignoring a US Admiral’s caution, while building hundreds of houses for US military. AUKUS is having a shocker. Former senator and submariner Rex Patrick reports.
On Friday, 25 July, Defence Minister Richard Marles and Foreign Minister Penny Wong stood beside their UK counterparts at a brief press conference in Sydney. They answered questions on a new 50-year treaty-level agreement between the UK and Australia related to the AUKUS submarine scheme.
The journalists who attended the press conference were not in possession of the text of the agreement, which was not actually signed by Marles and UK Defence Secretary John Healey until the following day, and not in Sydney but rather in Geelong. Without the text of the treaty being released, no hard questions could be asked (see below).
Marles apparently thought it more important to have the text signed a day after the ministerial discussions so that the “Nuclear-Powered Submarine Partnership and Collaboration Agreement between the Government of Australia and the Government of Great Britain and Northern Ireland” could be informally named after his hometown, as “the Geelong Treaty”.
The whole stage-managed affair was one that would have left everyone feeling warm and fuzzy in the halls of Parliament, where rhetoric counts for more than reality.
Meanwhile, in US Congress
About the same time, the Geelong Treaty was being announced, news was breaking in Australia of the testimony to the United States Senate of the nominee to serve as the next US Chief of Navy, Admiral Daryl Caudle. What he had to say did not augur well for Australia eventually being provided with three US Virginia-class nuclear-powered attack submarines as envisaged under AUKUS.
“The question of Australia’s ability to conduct undersea warfare is not in question by me or by anyone,” the admiral told the Senate Armed Services Committee’s seapower subcommittee. “But as you know, the delivery pace is not where it needs to be to make good on the Pillar 1 of the AUKUS agreement, which is currently under review by our Defense Department”.
Caudle testified that “There are no magic beans.”
“We do have to understand whether or not the industrial base can produce the submarines required so that we can make good on the actual pact that we made with the U.K. and Australia, which is around 2.2., 2.3 Virginia-class submarines per year.”
“That’s going to require a transformational improvement, not a 10 percent improvement, not a 20 percent, a 100 percent improvement.”
Of course, none of this was really news. The US Congressional Research Service and numerous other well-informed observers have been spelling out these facts for some time, but Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Defence Minister Marles remain wilfully blind to the facts. Having put all their political chips on AUKUS, they don’t want to see or hear anything negative. Instead of a pause, they’ve been writing taxpayer-funded cheques to gift United States shipyards.
They quietly slipped the US Government another non-refundable $800M last week – following on from a non-refundable $800M in February.
No control, no warranty
By Monday, the ‘Geelong Treaty’ had been tabled in the Parliament.
A read of the treaty documents revealed the completely lop-sided nature of the partnership with the UK. Whilst Australia gets to have a bit of a say, the UK get to decide the design of SSN-AUKUS. Australia will be buying and building a British design, and the success, delivery schedule, and cost will be absolutely dependent on the United Kingdom’s currently run-down and struggling submarine industrial base.
And if it doesn’t work in the end, there is no warranty.
During the election campaign, a number of cross-benchers and the Greens started calling for an AUKUS inquiry, a call repeated this week by Senator David Shoebridge. He lodged a motion to establish a Select Committee into what is our most expensive and purportedly most important Defence procurement project ever.
The inquiry motion was originally set to be voted on on Tuesday, but as the week progressed, Senator Shoebridge kept postponing it. That’s a signal that he didn’t have the numbers to get a ‘yes’ vote. The Labor Party has already ruled out an inquiry, and it looks like the Senator is trying to get the Liberal Party on board.
We’ll now find out the inquiry’s fate on 25 August. The Liberal Party are unlikely to support the inquiry. They want to criticise the government’s handling of the US alliance, but they have no intention of questioning AUKUS, which, after all, was first conceived by their man, Prime Minister Scott Morrison.
It’s an all-eggs-in-the-one-$368B-basket capability acquisition full of risk – but it appears as though there will be no oversight.
As the Parliament appears reluctant to review AUKUS, in true Trump tariff negotiation style, the US Defence Department announced its review of AUKUS would not be completed until “fall” (the next three months).
Housing bill waved through
To add icing on the cake, the government’s first Housing Bill in the 48th Parliament, voted through the House on Wednesday by the duopoly, was one to build houses, not for Australians, but for foreign military personnel and their families in Perth.
As Senator Shoebridge tried to have this Bill referred to a Senate Committee, he laid it out:
“In the last parliament, we saw Labor coming up with a million reasons they couldn’t do anything on public housing. They couldn’t help people out on rents, they couldn’t build public housing, and they kept saying it was all the Greens’ fault for not supporting their crap bills. Then, in this parliament, they start with a public housing bill. Well done, Labor! You bring a public housing bill into the chamber. You push it through the lower house. And do you know what public housing they’re building? They’re building public housing for US troops under AUKUS. That’s their public housing bill.”
“Please, minister, you haven’t explained in the bill how much this is going to cost; is it going to come from the Defence budget or some other budget?”
No answer was given, and no referral to a committee occurred.
The AUKUS week closed with some lobbying on Sky by former Secretary of Home Affairs, Michael Pezzulo. Pezzulo is officially disgraced, but is not without expertise on national security issues.
Pezzulo does know something about the financing of Australia’s defence capabilities, and he issued a blunt warning about the scale and urgency of Australia’s AUKUS commitments, saying the nuclear submarine program will demand a national effort on par with Medicare.
“It’s like having the military version of Medicare. It’s something that’s got to become an all-consuming, focused effort that transcends Commonwealth, state, territory governments into industry, academia, the training pipeline through both universities and vocational educational training institutions.”
All that statement does is roll out the trifecta. The US can’t deliver Virginia Class submarines to us; the UK submarine industry is a cluster fiasco; and Australia’s not ready. And, we will have to make AUKUS submarines our number one national priority if we are to have any chance of success.
In 2023 Paul Keating – without knowledge of the total $4.7B that is to be gifted to the United States, or the similar amount that is being gifted to the UK, nor the facts that the US is unlikely to deliver, and that we really don’t have any rights in relation to the SSN-AUKUS – called it “the worst deal in all history”.
Knowing what we know now, Keating was wrong. He should have said “dumbest deal in all history”.
The AUKUS Submarine Deal is Dead
National Security Journal, By Andrew Latham, 7 Aug 25
– Key Points and Summary – The central promise of the AUKUS security pact—to provide Australia with nuclear-powered submarines—is reportedly no longer viable due to a severe crisis in the U.S. and UK defense industrial bases.
-The U.S. Navy is struggling to build and maintain its own submarine fleet and cannot spare any Virginia-class boats, while the UK’s industry has no surplus capacity to make up the shortfall.
-This leaves Australia facing a dangerous capability gap.
-As a result, Canberra is now forced to upgrade its aging Collins-class submarines and fast-track its own domestic submarine production, a process that will take over a decade.
The AUKUS Submarine Deal Looks RIP
The central element of AUKUS was always the promise to provide Australia with nuclear-powered submarines. According to the terms of the agreement, the US would provide Australia with at least three Virginia-class boats, and the UK and Australia would begin development on their own SSN-AUKUS platform. This plan is no longer viable.
The United States can’t provide the submarines; the United Kingdom can neither make up for the shortfall nor co-develop such a submarine in a reasonable timeframe; and Canberra must now face the unpleasant truth that the promises made in 2021 were more fantasy pledges than realistic commitments.
…………………..there was a tacit acknowledgement all along that a nuclear submarine program was more than a propulsion system—it was an entire industrial ecosystem. It needs an industrial base, a trained workforce, a secure supply chain, and, most critically, decades of institutional memory. AUKUS made the assumption that the United States could build Virginia-class submarines for itself and its AUKUS partners. That is no longer a reasonable assumption.
The US Navy is two boats short of its target force, it’s fielding a rate of barely 1.2 boats a year (far short of a two-per-year benchmark), and it has a chronic maintenance backlog that leaves a third of its force in port. It is unable to uprate its skilled labor pool, reactor modules, or dry dock capacity, and there is no margin in the shipyards even with billions in new money being injected into the program. Canberra had pledged US$2bn by the end of 2025 to help build up US industrial capacity. The yards at Groton and Newport News have no space to spare even for that investment. The bottleneck is a systemic one.
Admiral Daryl Caudle was frank in testimony last month. The US industrial base, he testified, would have to double its attack submarine output for America to meet its obligations under the AUKUS agreement with Australia and the United Kingdom. In April, the Pentagon initiated a 30-day review to see if it could simultaneously meet the needs of the US Navy and the Australian demand. Four months later, the review is still not public, but the answer is already clear: the US cannot do both. It cannot, even if it wanted to, turn over one or two boats to Australia, because the Navy has none to spare. Even if it did, the optics of transferring high-end submarines to another country while its own force contracts would be impossible for Congress to accept.
And the UK simply cannot provide subs in place of the promised but undeliverable American boats. The Royal Navy has already made an in-principle commitment to the SSN-AUKUS program. Still, Britain’s existing submarine program, which produces the Astute-class submarine, has suffered from years of delays, budget overruns, and production shortfalls since it was first launched. And BAE Systems, the prime contractor in the British submarine industry, has minimal spare capacity to increase the rate of production beyond its existing domestic orders. In short, there are no surplus subs—and, more importantly, no realistic possibility of any near-term export of nuclear-powered boats to Australia before the 2040s. Political will aside, industrial capacity isn’t there. The UK cannot bail out the US shortfall, and the AUKUS partnership as a viable trilateral supply chain has effectively ceased to exist. That, in turn, leaves Australia with no option but to fast-track its submarine industrial base; a process which it is already doing, quietly but steadily.
Canberra is already responding. The Collins-class submarines, at more than 20 years old, are being upgraded and their lifespan extended………………………. Australia will not be launching a domestically built nuclear submarine before the late 2030s. That is a decade away. The capability gap is real, and the risk profile is increasing.
The idea that the US could transfer a Virginia-class boat or two to make good the gap was floated early on. The politics have since moved against it. Congress is increasingly dubious about hardware transfers when the state of American readiness is already so poor. The Navy itself is against anything that would take boats from its already underpowered undersea fleet. The situation is not in flux: it is set. Washington cannot deliver what it promised. The internal Pentagon review, which has already been provided to Congress, reportedly makes that clear. The language might be diplomatic; the reality is not…………………………………………………… https://nationalsecurityjournal.org/the-aukus-submarine-deal-is-dead/
Assange Joins Historic Anti-Genocide March Across Sydney’s Harbour Bridge
By Joe Lauria, Consortium News, 3 August 25, https://consortiumnews.com/2025/08/03/assange-joins-historic-anti-genocide-march-across-sydneys-harbour-bridge/
Julian Assange joined at least 90,000 and as many as 300,000 people who marched across Australia’s most famous bridge on Sunday to protest Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, his wife Stella and brother Gabriel Shipton joined Australian journalist Mary Kostakidis and, according to police estimates, 90,000 other people, but according to organizers as many as 300,000, to march across Sydney’s Harbour Bridge on Sunday to demand an end to Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
The Sydney Morning Herald reported:
“At least 90,000 pro-Palestine protesters walked across Sydney Harbour Bridge and into history through the pelting rain, as a larger crowd than expected used the landmark as a symbol, bringing the city to a standstill and leading police to sound the alarm of a potential crowd crush.
In the face of the sheer size of the protest against the Israeli government’s actions in Gaza, which organisers say drew between 200,000 and 300,000 people, police were forced to ditch plans for the march to end at North Sydney and redirected the crowd. … The last major march across the bridge was 25 years ago, when 250,000 people marched in support of reconciliation [with Indigenous Australians.]”
Kostakidis is in court accused of racial hatred by the Zionist Federation of Australia for her social media reporting and commentary critical of the Israeli government’s genocide in Gaza.
[Consortium News was on the bridge and will be providing a full video report.].
The New South Wales premiere and police both tried to stop the march from happening by making protestors liable to arrest for blocking traffic. It took a Supreme Court ruling on Saturday to let it go ahead. About four times as many people turned up than organizers had expected — even in a driving winter rain — because of the concerted effort to stop it, an organizer told The Sydney Morning Herald.
The paper quoted Palestine Action Group organiser Josh Lees as saying said the march was “’even bigger than we dreamt of’ after people travelled from across the country to attend. He called the event a ‘monumental and historic’ success. ‘Today was just a huge display of democracy,’ he said.”
The massive turnout shows the revulsion a good number of Australians feel for Israel’s ongoing slaughter and for their government’s complicity. “Netanyahu/Albanese you can’t hide. Stop supporting genocide,” the protestors chanted.
Police were not prepared for the outpouring of outrage. The Herald said:
“NSW Police acting deputy commissioner Peter McKenna said the march came ‘very close’ to a ‘catastrophic situation’ and that officers had been forced to make a snap decision to turn tens of thousands around to avoid a crowd crush as people exited for North Sydney. McKenna said part of the problem was the organisers’ application to march stated that 10,000 people were likely to attend, not the 90,000 people the police estimated turned up.”
1 This month
of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
Antinuclear 