Antinuclear

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.”

August 13, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | wastes | Leave a comment

Toxic threat: New Greenpeace report outlines unacceptable risk of nuclear waste in Australia

Joe Rafalowicz, Head of Climate and Energy at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said: “Peter Dutton’s nuclear plan is a dangerous and expensive disaster waiting to happen. From Chernobyl to Fukushima, the devastation of nuclear disasters is a risk that Australia cannot afford to, and doesn’t need to, take. 

“Australians don’t need the equivalent of 14 billion Coke cans of radioactive nuclear waste every year. The Coalition has not offered a credible plan for how it will manage nuclear waste safely, nor how it will fund this multibillion dollar effort. 

“Australia’s unenviable track record of mismanaging even low-level nuclear waste, as well as a history of radioactive incidents in the US, UK and EU, reveals how complex it is to manage nuclear waste safely. Multiplying that challenge many times over by building a fleet of nuclear reactors could have devastating consequences for communities and ecosystems. 

“International examples show that accidents, natural disasters, and other waste management failures occur with alarming regularity. A nuclear waste accident could lead to mass casualties, long-term health impacts, and the contamination of groundwater, farmland, and ecosystems for millennia. The clean-up bill from an incident would be astronomical, costing billions of dollars. 

“Australia doesn’t need nuclear energy, which is just a smokescreen to prolong the use of climate-wrecking coal and gas for decades. We are almost halfway to powering the nation with clean, affordable wind and solar, and should be supercharging efforts to get to 100% renewables backed by storage.

“The Coalition has not asked communities like Collie, Latrobe Valley and the Hunter Valley for their consent to build nuclear reactors and waste dumps in their backyards, but the upcoming Federal Election is a chance for voters to have a say in Australia’s energy future. Peter Dutton’s nuclear plan is too dangerous to proceed, and Australians should strongly reject the idea of nuclear energy here.”  https://www.greenpeace.org.au/static/planet4-australiapacific-stateless/2025/04/23ab6ee2-toxic-threat-greenpeace-australia-pacific-report.pdf

April 25, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | wastes | Leave a comment

No walk in the park for nuclear reactors at life’s end

Canberra Times, By Poppy Johnston, April 20 2025

It may feel far, far away but the energy sources getting hooked up to the grid today will eventually need to be put out to pasture.

Decommissioning is a major undertaking for any industrial facility yet for nuclear power plants – on the table under the federal coalition’s alternative pathway to net zero – Australia’s lack of experience raises a host of unknowns. 

Walking through the process of dismantling a nuclear power plant, Australian National University energy transition expert Ken Baldwin says the first step is removing the used radioactive fuel and coolant to be stored safely elsewhere.

Next is dismantling the rest of the plant, with some of the components surrounding the reactor made slightly radioactive during a lifetime of operation.

That radioactivity is “relatively short-lived” compared to the human lifespan-defying decay rates of more potent nuclear waste.

“Often what happens is the nuclear plant might be left in a safe state with the fuel and the coolant removed for a number of years to allow that radioactivity to decay,” Professor Baldwin tells AAP.

After that time has lapsed, work begins on removing what’s left.

Globally, the 2024 World Nuclear Industry Status Report has 213 closed power reactors on its count and 23 fully decommissioned.

Dismantling reactors takes 20 years, on average.

Retiring nuclear plants is a “horses for courses” proposition, Prof Baldwin says, with costs and timelines dependent on the type of facility, decommissioning plans and regulations.

A rule of thumb is 10-15 per cent of the total capital cost of the facility, equivalent to somewhere between $780 million and $3 billion for a standard 1 gigawatt nuclear plant, and adding roughly five per cent to electricity bills.

End-of-life costs are covered in a variety of ways, including putting aside funds before the plant is built………………….

For the United Kingdom’s 3260MW Hinkley Point C, developers were required to set aside 7.2 billion pounds, or almost 15 billion Australian dollars, for clean-up in 2016.

However the agency noted there was uncertainty about the actual bill and taxpayers could be on the hook if the cap was exceeded.

The threat of higher-than-expected decommissioning costs was raised by mining billionaire and green steel and renewables proponent Andrew Forrest at a business breakfast in Perth earlier in the month.

“You see France spending $60 billion to bring up two gigawatts but they’re not talking about the 14 nuclear power plants they’re having to completely take down and try and return to the environment,” he said.

“I go to the best engineers in the world and they’ve got no idea what that’s going to cost.”

Opposition leader Peter Dutton highlighted the costs of dismantling wind turbines when asked for clarity on his plan for decommissioning the seven nuclear power plants his party plans to build if it wins the federal election………………………………… https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/8946374/no-walk-in-the-park-for-nuclear-reactors-at-lifes-end/

April 21, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | wastes | Leave a comment

International ‘nuclear tombs’ are being built, but how do we warn future generations of what’s inside?

in November 2024, Adelaide residents said they were “blindsided” when federal parliament legislation allowed for nuclear waste to be stored and disposed of at a shipping yard in Osborne — 25 kilometres north-west of the CBD and seaside suburbs.

The plans are part of the $368 billion AUKUS project, which will involve building nuclear submarines in South Australia, and include a commitment from the federal government that it would secure storage for nuclear waste produced.

By Megan Macdonald for Future Tense, 20 Mar 25, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-03-20/nuclear-tombs-overseas-offer-warning-for-future-generations/105024144

Earth is no spring chicken.

In fact, based on scientific dating, it’s considered to be 4.5 billion years old.

Coincidentally, that’s also how long depleted uranium (a by-product of the process of enriching uranium for use in nuclear power reactors and weapons) remains dangerous.

And so, as the idea of using nuclear energy as an alternative power source dominates headlines, the safe storage of toxic waste produced by nuclear power and how we warn future generations about its dangers is being considered.  

Dr Shastra Deo, a nuclear semiotics expert and author at the University of Queensland, tells ABC Radio National’s Future Tense this is a quandary at the centre of nuclear semiotics.

“Nuclear semiotics is obsessed with this idea of creating a sign to warn us about the dangers of nuclear waste into deep time … The main timeline we’re working with is 10,000 years, but that’s frankly not enough to keep us safe,” she says.

Nuclear on the mind

In June 2024, in response to Australia’s cost-of-living crisis and an upcoming federal election, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton announced his proposal for nuclear power in Australia.

Promising zero emissions and lower power prices, the announcement named seven locations for the nuclear power plants across Australia, which would be built next to existing infrastructure.

These included Mount Piper Power Station in New South Wales, Loy Yang Power Stations in Victoria and Tarong Power Station in Queensland.

While the announcement didn’t include a plan for how the toxic waste produced from nuclear power would be managed, it did state that a community engagement process would occur alongside “a comprehensive site study including detailed technical and economic assessments”.

Mr Dutton’s announcement added that currently, “32 countries [are] operating zero-emissions nuclear plants. Another 50 countries are looking to do so”.

Yet, while nuclear energy is a source of power for many countries, the question of what to do about the highly toxic waste that nuclear energy produces is not settled.

Toxic tension

The rolling hills of France’s Champagne region are known for their green landscapes and quaint villages.

But nearly 500 meters beneath the small village of Bure, France, large tomb-like chambers are being constructed by France’s national radioactive waste agency, Andra, so that they can demonstrate their suitability for building a geological disposal facility (GDF).

GDFs are built to store intermediate to high-level nuclear waste safely for thousands of years.

Andra’s chambers are part of a huge international engineering effort to build giant underground nuclear tombs for waste storage across the United Kingdom (UK) and Europe

Finland was the first country to build a deep GDF to store spent nuclear fuel for 100,000 years, and initial testing has already begun. 

Mark Piesing, a UK-based freelance journalist, reported on the European and UK GDF plans last year.

He says GDFs take many years to get approved and built, and their long-term success relies on decades of future political stability.

“The security of them depends on the continuation of governments and states as we know it … If there is a political upheaval, if there [are] revolutions, if climate change brings about social chaos, then the security of these installations will be compromised,” he says.

Mr Piesing visited the Andra testing facility in Bure, France, and he describes the scale of the proposed GDF as “quite awe-inspiring”.

“The scale of it … you could imagine the pharaohs building something similar, the workers working for years,” he says.

While impressive, the construction and plans for GDFs across Europe haven’t been without controversy.

The Andra project underneath Bure, France (with a population of only 82 residents) has sparked protests — some violent — from anti-nuclear activists over the company’s plans to build a GDF for nuclear storage.

In Sweden, the Swedish Nuclear Fuel and Waste Management Company commenced test drilling across the country in the 1980s to find suitable locations for potential nuclear waste storage, a move that didn’t go down well.

“The Swedish authorities perhaps didn’t consult the community enough. So this caused protests in a number of locations where they’re trying to do their test drilling,” Mr Piesing said.

And here in Australia, proposed sites for storage of toxic nuclear waste have also received backlash.

Where would we store nuclear waste in Australia?

The storage of nuclear waste has been a long-held issue of national contention, particularly in South Australia.

In 2023, the Barngarla traditional owners of SA’s Eyre Peninsula won a legal challenge to stop the federal government from building a nuclear waste facility near Kimba.

The plans were to store low and intermediate-level radioactive waste at the proposed facility.

Then, in November 2024, Adelaide residents said they were “blindsided” when federal parliament legislation allowed for nuclear waste to be stored and disposed of at a shipping yard in Osborne — 25 kilometres north-west of the CBD and seaside suburbs.

The plans are part of the $368 billion AUKUS project, which will involve building nuclear submarines in South Australia, and include a commitment from the federal government that it would secure storage for nuclear waste produced.

Ted O’Brien, Shadow Minister for Climate Change and Energy, tells the ABC that the Coalition has a long-term plan for nuclear waste storage if it wins the upcoming election.

“Spent fuel from nuclear power plants will be temporarily stored on-site before being transported to a permanent waste repository, where spent fuel from our AUKUS nuclear submarines will also be stored,” he says.

Mr O’Brien says the permanent site’s location is a matter for the federal government.

The location of the permanent site under the AUKUS deal has not been addressed since late last year by the federal government. 

However in January it was revealed by former senator Rex Patrick that documents obtained via Freedom of Information (FOI) show South Australia’s Defence Industries Minister met with a defence company in the UK for the “specific purpose of being briefed” on the dismantling of nuclear reactors and the waste associated with them.

“[The government is] yet to clarify the location … It is now Labor’s responsibility for identifying a long-term waste repository,” Mr O’Brien says.

“We stand ready to cooperate constructively.”.

A warning for generations to come

While the future for Australia’s nuclear waste remains unclear, Dr Shastra Deo says we can look back at history to inform the need for warnings surrounding toxic waste storage for future generations.

“You see the [Egyptian] pyramids and they’re very intriguing to us … There was a warning message on them from one of the pharaoh’s viziers that said, ‘If you intrude on my tomb, I will curse you and you will die,’ — and we went in anyway,” he explains.

“We’re curious people. That’s what humanity is … we want to find out what’s in these spaces.

n Ms Deo’s field of nuclear semiotics, several ideas have been raised to warn future generations of the dangers of toxic waste stored below ground.

These include hostile architecture (an urban design strategy that uses elements of a built environment to purposefully guide behaviour of humans), the use of symbols and an “atomic priesthood” of knowledge keepers.

Rounding out the list is the “black hole” which, as Ms Deo explains, would involve “putting granite over the area and the sun would heat it up to a point where you just couldn’t walk across it”.

Ms Deo says the ongoing challenge lies in the length of time these warnings are required, which can be hundreds of thousands of years. 

“How can we create a message that will last this long? Already you can kind of see the impossibility in that.”

Ms Deo says that regardless of the challenges, we must consider our accountability to those who come after us.

“We need to send a message to ourselves about this technology and how we’re going to move forward with it — and how we’re going to store it.”

It’s a question that we’ve yet to answer.

March 20, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | wastes | Leave a comment

Briefing paper from UK trip shows nuclear waste discussions held, as location for AUKUS submarine waste remains undecided

ABC News, Stateline, Leah MacLennan, 31 Jan 25

In short:

Former senator Rex Patrick says documents show SA’s Defence Industries Minister met with a defence company in the UK for the “specific purpose of being briefed” on the dismantling of nuclear reactors and the waste associated.

Mr Mullighan says those topics were not the “focus” of the discussions.

What’s next? 

Legislation passed last year allowing nuclear waste to be stored at Osborne, but the government says a location for any high-level waste storage is still to be decided.

A former senator has sounded the alarm over documents he says point to government discussions about the defueling and dismantling of nuclear submarines at South Australia’s Osborne shipyards.

Rex Patrick was a Navy submariner, entered the Senate as a replacement for Nick Xenophon, and is now running for the Senate again as a Jacqui Lambie Network candidate.

He has obtained documents through freedom of information (FOI) that show South Australia’s Treasurer and Defence Industries Minister Stephen Mullighan met with defence company Babcock during a visit to the United Kingdom late last year.

“What the FOI shows is that the Treasurer Mr Mullighan met with Babcock for the specific purpose of being briefed on the dismantling of nuclear reactors and waste associated with those nuclear reactors,” Mr Patrick said.

The documents include a briefing paper for the meeting, which said the objective of the visit was to “discuss Babcock’s approach to nuclear powered submarine sustainment, defueling and disposal … seek information on Babcock’s experience in radioactive waste management/nuclear decommissioning,” and “discuss Babcock’s approach to nuclear powered submarine social license”.

Mr Patrick said the documents show the government was exploring the idea of dismantling the submarines’ nuclear reactors at Osborne.

He has called for more transparency and discussion with the public about what is being planned for the site under the AUKUS agreement.

“I’ve been looking at AUKUS and issues of nuclear waste for about three years and what I’ve found is that you really have to pull teeth to get access to information about this sort of stuff,” Mr Patrick said.

“Any decisions being made about this are not decisions that just affect this term of government or the next, they are decisions that will affect South Australians for tens of thousands of years.”…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Decommissioning still decades away

Australia’s first nuclear submarine will not arrive until the early 2030s, when the US plans to sell the government three Virginia Class boats.

The Virginia Class have a life span of more than 30 years, meaning their defueling and decommissioning is still decades away.

Rex Patrick argues that does not mean decisions can be delayed, because signing up to AUKUS is also signing up to a nuclear industry and dealing with the waste they will ultimately produce.

“Decisions around high-level nuclear waste are decisions that last for generations upon generations,” Mr Patrick said.

“They are not decisions that should simply be made and presented as a fait accompli by a government.”……………………………………………………………………..

Federal laws mean nuclear waste can be stored at Osborne

In October last year, legislation passed federal parliament that will allow for the storage and disposal of nuclear waste at Osborne.

The law does not define what level of waste can be stored there, but the federal government has given assurances that it will only be low-level waste.

Those assurances are not enough to allay concerns from the local community group that has branded itself ‘Port Adelaide Community Opposing Aukus’.

“One of our major concerns is that waste will be literally transported down Victoria Road, which alongside of it is a residential area,” group member Eileen Darley said.

“We’re going to be a docking point, or a gateway if you like, to some as yet unknown permanent nuclear dump somewhere.”………………………………………………

Major delays to UK decommissioning

The United Kingdom has had a fleet of nuclear submarines since the 1960s, but has faced multiple challenges decommissioning and disposing of boats that are out of service.

More than 20 decommissioned submarines are awaiting disposal at dockyards in Scotland and England, with half still waiting to be defueled.

The oldest, HMS Swiftsure, left service in 1992 and Babcock is now working with authorities to dismantle it, with an aim to be finished by the end of next year.

Overall it is a program that will cost billions of pounds.  https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-01-31/documents-show-nuclear-waste-discussions-aukus-submarines/104874852

January 31, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | wastes | Leave a comment

The $80 billion question buried in Dutton’s nuclear power plan.

“Companies can go bust, but the nuclear waste is still going to be there. It has to be owned by the government.”

Two elements of the opposition’s nuclear plan are not included in the costings – waste management and public liability for disasters.

Mike Foley, January 3, 2025 ,  https://www.theage.com.au/politics/federal/the-80-billion-question-buried-in-dutton-s-nuclear-power-plan-20241218-p5kzg9.html

Decommissioning any plants built under the Coalition’s nuclear energy plan could cost more than $80 billion, and taxpayers would have to foot the bill.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s planned seven nuclear plants, with a likely 14 large-scale reactors, would be publicly owned, so taxpayers would be liable for clean-up costs from the radioactive sites and any accidents during operation.

Last month, Britain’s National Audit Office found that the bill to clean up its old nuclear sites, which date back to the 1940s, would be $260 billion.

About $200 billion of this is to decommission Britain’s original Sellafield site for weapons and energy generation, with contaminated buildings and radioactive waste.

Another $48 billion is to decommission eight other nuclear sites, which now range from 36 to 48 years old, at a cost of $6 billion each. They are set to be handed back by a private operator to the government for decommissioning from 2028.

University of NSW energy researcher Mark Diesendorf said international experience showed the cost of decommissioning a nuclear reactor could be roughly in line with its construction cost, which the Coalition has said would be about $9 billion a reactor in Australia.

“For a rough approximation, you’re looking at probably the equivalent of the construction cost,” Diesendorf said.

If the Coalition’s plan to build 14 nuclear reactors by the mid-2040s is realised, the decommissioning bill would be roughly $82 billion to $125 billion in today’s dollars.

Private firm Frontier Economics produced costings of the opposition’s plan that included decommissioning in an overall $331 billion bill to build 14 gigawatts of nuclear generation. However, it is unclear what price was attached to clean-up and whether it is plausible, given Frontier has declined to release the assumptions it used.

Frontier said the government’s policy to boost renewables to nearly 100 per cent of electricity generation by 2050 would cost $595 billion – a figure the federal government has rejected. Labor says nuclear is the most expensive form of new energy generation.

Opposition energy spokesman Ted O’Brien said the Coalition’s plan was cheaper than the government’s renewable energy goals.

“Unlike the Coalition, Labor refuses to calculate the full cost of its plan, such as the decommissioning costs of massive offshore wind projects in the six zones it has identified off the Australian coast,” O’Brien said.

Griffith University Emeritus Professor Ian Lowe said Diesendorf’s assumption that decommissioning a large-scale reactor would cost the same as building it was “sensible”.

“The World Nuclear Association has information about the 25 reactors that have been decommissioned, and the figures vary enormously,” Lowe said.

“The figure of about $6 billion per reactor sounds about the average figure, assuming that there are no complications.”

The opposition has said its nuclear reactors would operate for 80 years, and University of NSW Associate Professor Edward Obbard, a nuclear materials engineer, said it made “perfect sense” for a country to hold the liability for nuclear decommissioning, given the cost and timescale required.

“I don’t think there’s any alternative to the state being responsible for decommissioning a nuclear power program,” Obbard said.

“Companies can go bust, but the nuclear waste is still going to be there. It has to be owned by the government.”

The government could choose to isolate an old nuclear reactor once it reaches its end of life, and leave it alone for several decades until the radioactivity had reduced, he said.

Two elements of the opposition’s nuclear plan are not included in the costings – waste management and public liability for disasters.

Diesendorf and Lowe said public liability in the unlikely event of a nuclear accident could run into the hundreds of billions of dollars, given the $290 billion clean-up bill from Japan’s 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster.

January 4, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | wastes | Leave a comment

Consultation, full disclosure, and an environmental audit: Nuclear Free Local Authorities’ triple demand of Australian government over nuke sub waste dump down under

the NFLAs have raised our fundamental objections to any siting of nuclear powered, and possibly nuclear armed, submarines at Garden Island as a violation of Australia’s legal commitments as a signatory to the Treaty of Rarotonga, which established a South Pacific nuclear free zone. The proposal will increase military tensions with China and make Rockingham a target for a counterstrike should war break out.

a White House paper states that Australia ‘has committed to managing all radioactive waste generated through its nuclear-powered submarine program, including spent nuclear fuel, in Australia’.

NFLA 22nd Nov 2024

With an international outlook and solidarity in mind, in response to a consultation by the Australian Federal Government, the UK / Ireland Nuclear Free Local Authorities have posted their objections to plans to station nuclear-powered subs and establish a waste dump in Western Australia.

As part of the AUKUS military pact established between Australia, the United Kingdom and United States, Australia intends to acquire a fleet of nuclear powered submarines, powered by reactors built by Rolls-Royce in Derby, as well as permitting Royal Navy and United States Navy nuclear submarines to operate from Australian naval bases.

In March 2023,the AUKUS Nuclear-Powered Submarine Pathway was announced by the three partners centred on the HMAS Stirling Naval Base on Garden Island in Western Australia’s Cockburn Sound. The Australian Government has allocated AUS $8 billion for base improvements.

Under the AUKUS ‘Force Posture Agreement’, from 2027, US Virginia Class submarines are to be stationed here, with British Astute submarines joining them on rotation in the 2030’s. Around this time, the base will also become the home port of Australia’s first nuclear powered submarines, with three and up to five Virginia Class submarines being purchased from the US (subject to Congressional approval).

The Federal Government has passed new legislation to allow for the domestic storage of nuclear waste from all these submarines, and in July after a limited consultation the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA) issued a licence to the Australian Submarine Agency to prepare a nuclear waste storage site at the base. Without it, visiting United States and British nuclear-powered submarines could not undertake maintenance in Australia, so the nuclear dump is seen as essential to the pact.

The extent and nature of the waste to be stored, and for how long it would be stored, remains unclear. The Conservation Council of Western Australia (CCWA) complained to the regulatory authorities that: ‘The consultation documents provided no details about the volume of waste or how long it would be stored at the island. They also made confused and misleading claims about the types of low-level waste that would be accepted’.

Whilst regulators insist that it would be low-level waste, this claim has been refuted by critic Australian Green Senator David Shoebridge who said the Federal legislators were told in a Senate Estimates Hearing by the Australian Submarine Agency that it would include intermediate waste. It is also contradicted by a White House paper which states that Australia ‘has committed to managing all radioactive waste generated through its nuclear-powered submarine program, including spent nuclear fuel, in Australia’.

This waste would include US Virginia-class submarine reactors, which each weigh over 100 tonnes and contain over 200 kilograms of highly enriched uranium. Ian Lowe, an expert on radiation health and safety, told The Conversation in March 2023 that when the first three AUKUS submarines are at the end of their lives — 30 years from when they are commissioned — Australia will have 600 kilograms of ‘spent fuel’ and ‘potentially tonnes of irradiated material from the reactors and their protective walls’. The fuel being weapons-grade will require ‘military-scale security’.

Australian campaigners have also complained bitterly that the submarine base and the storage site are located in the wrong place.

Mia Pepper, Campaign Director at the CCWA, said that ‘Garden Island in one of the most pristine and diverse environments in the Perth region’ and that ‘This plan for both nuclear submarines and nuclear waste storage will inevitably impact access to parts of Cockburn Sound and Garden Island’.

And when responding to ARPANSA, the CCWA stated that the facility is ‘within an area of dense population’ and in the vicinity of ‘important and diverse heavy industrial facilities, including a major shipping port’. The CCWA also raised the ‘unaddressed community concerns regarding an accident’ on the site and complained about the ‘lack of transparency and rigour’ throughout the regulatory process.

Nor is there any long-term solution to storage. Garden Island would be seen as a temporary store, but it is unclear for how long. A Federal Government proposal to establish a nuclear waste dump at Kimba was resisted by local Indigenous people who launched a successful legal challenge to defeat the plan.

In its response to the consultation being conducted by the Australian Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, the NFLAs have raised our fundamental objections to any siting of nuclear powered, and possibly nuclear armed, submarines at Garden Island as a violation of Australia’s legal commitments as a signatory to the Treaty of Rarotonga, which established a South Pacific nuclear free zone. The proposal will increase military tensions with China and make Rockingham a target for a counterstrike should war break out.

We also called on the Federal Government to conduct a proper consultation and make a full disclosure of the facts, and requested that officials conduct a full environmental audit of the likely impact of the waste storage site…………………………………………. https://www.nuclearpolicy.info/news/consultation-full-disclosure-and-an-environmental-audit-nflas-triple-demand-of-australian-government-over-nuke-sub-waste-dump-down-under/

November 24, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | wastes | Leave a comment

Nuclear waste management could add billions to electricity supply costs

Jennifer Dudley-Nicholson, Nov 8, 2024 https://reneweconomy.com.au/nuclear-waste-management-could-add-billions-to-electricity-supply-costs/

Handling and storing nuclear waste could add significant costs to Australia’s future energy bills, an inquiry has heard, with Canada set to spend $26 billion to safely store depleted fuel from its reactors.

The cost and time to build nuclear power plants in Australia also remained a mystery, two academics told the Nuclear Power Generation inquiry on Thursday, including the demands of small modular reactors proposed for two states.

The testimony comes on the third hearing of the nuclear energy inquiry, created in October after federal Liberal leader Peter Dutton announced plans to establish nuclear power plants in seven Australian locations after the next election.

But the details of an Australian switch from a renewable energy future to one powered by nuclear plants remain unclear, with the inquiry set to probe financial, technical, legal and environmental impacts of a change.

York University environmental studies Professor Mark Winfield told MPs the Canadian experience had been a troubling and expensive one, with its seven nuclear plants now reduced to four in operation.

Canada also faced a bill of $26 billion to handle, move and safely store wasted nuclear fuel, he said, of which the country had three million bundles and produced between 85,000 and 90,000 each year.

The bundles, he said, were about the size of a small log.

“It’s physically hot when it comes to the reactor, it’s also highly radioactive when it comes out of the reactor, the swimming pools are supposed to be for the first 50 years or so, while it cools down a bit,” Prof Winfield told the committee.

“The nuclear waste management organisations planning assumption then is that long-term management or disposal would need to occur on a time frame of a million years.”

Questions also remained about the price of new-build nuclear plants, the inquiry heard, and Princeton University senior research scientist Dr Chris Greig said naming a price for small modular reactors was a tricky challenge.

Small modular reactors have been tipped for sites in South Australia and West Australia under the coalition’s proposal, with 2035 as a potential start date.

“The people who are ordering them right now, Dow being one of them and Google and Microsoft and OpenAI and Meta, they don’t know what the cost is going to be yet,” he said.

“They have targets but, frankly, none of us have any confidence in those targets.”

The time it would take to build small reactors was also challenging to estimate, he said, with the most optimistic estimates seeing plants operating in the early 2030s…………………………………………………..

The nuclear power inquiry is expected to issue recommendations by April next year.

November 10, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | wastes | Leave a comment