Antinuclear

Australia won’t receive Aukus nuclear submarines unless US doubles shipbuilding, admiral warns

Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull says there is a ‘very, very high’ chance Virginia-class subs will never arrive under Australian control.

Ben Doherty, 28 July 25, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jul/28/aukus-australia-nuclear-submarines-us-subs-navy-admiral

The US cannot sell any Virginia-class nuclear submarines to Australia without doubling its production rate, because it is making too few for its own defence, the navy’s nominee for chief of operations has told Congress.

There are “no magic beans” to boosting the US’s sclerotic shipbuilding capacity, Admiral Daryl Caudle said in frank evidence before a Senate committee.

The US’s submarine fleet numbers are a quarter below their target, US government figures show, and the country is producing boats at just over half the rate it needs to service its own defence requirements.

Testifying before the Senate Committee on Armed Services as part of his confirmation process to serve as the next chief of naval operations, Caudle lauded Royal Australian Navy sailors as “incredible submariners”, but said the US would not be able to sell them any boats – as committed under the Aukus pact – without a “100% improvement” on shipbuilding rate

The US Navy estimates it needs to be building Virginia-class submarines at a rate of 2.00 a year to meet its own defence requirements, and about 2.33 to have enough boats to sell any to Australia. It is currently building Virginia-class submarines at a rate of about 1.13 a year, senior admirals say.

“Australia’s ability to conduct undersea warfare is not in question,” Caudle said, “but as you know the delivery pace is not what it needs to be to make good on the pillar one of the Aukus agreement which is currently under review by our defence department”.

Caudle said efficiency gains or marginal improvements would not be sufficient to “make good on the actual pact that we made with the UK and Australia, which is … around 2.2 to 2.3 Virginia-class submarines per year”.

“That is going to require a transformational improvement; not a 10% improvement, not a 20% improvement but a 100% improvement,” he said.

Under pillar one of the Aukus agreement, Australia is scheduled to buy between three and five Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarines from the US, starting in 2032.

The UK will build the first Aukus-class submarine for its navy by “the late 2030s”. The first Australian-built Aukus boat will be in the water “in the early 2040s”. Aukus is forecast to cost Australia up to $368bn over 30 years.

US goodwill towards Australia, or the import of the US-alliance, would be irrelevant to any decision to sell submarines: Aukus legislation prohibits the US selling Australia any submarine if that would weaken US naval strength.

Australia has already paid $1.6bn out of an expected total of $4.7bn (US$3bn) to help the US boost its flagging shipbuilding industry.

But the US itself has been pouring money into its shipbuilding yards, without noticeable effect.

A joint statement on “the state of nuclear shipbuilding” issued by three rear admirals in April noted that while Congress had committed an additional US$5.7bn to lift wages and shipyard productivity, “we have not observed the needed and expected ramp-up in Columbia-class and Virginia-class submarine production rates necessary”.

Caudle, himself a career submariner, said the US would need “creativity, ingenuity, and some outsourcing improvements” if it were to meet its shipbuilding demands and produce 2.3 Virginia-class vessels a year.

“There are no magic beans to that,” he told the Senate hearing. “There’s nothing that’s just going to make that happen. So the solution space has got to open up.”

‘Why is there no plan B?’

The former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, who first reported on Caudle’s testimony to the Senate, told the Guardian that there was “no shortage of goodwill towards Australia” from the US in relation to Aukus, but the realities of a shortfall of submarines meant there was a “very, very high” probability that Virginia-class submarines would never arrive under Australian control.

Turnbull said the language coming from US naval experts was “framing expectations realistically”, essentially saying that, without dramatic reform, the US could not sell any of its Virginia-class boats. With the Collins class nearing the end of their service lives, and the Aukus submarine design and build facing delays in the UK, Australia could be left without any submarine capability for a decade, potentially two, Turnbull argued.

“The risk of us not getting any Virginia-class submarines is – objectively – very, very high. The real question is why is the government not acknowledging that … and why is there no plan B? What are they doing to acquire alternative capabilities in the event of the Virginias not arriving?”

Turnbull – who, as prime minister, had signed the diesel-electric submarine deal with French giant Naval that was unilaterally abandoned in favour of the Aukus agreement in 2021 – argued the Australian government, parliament and media had failed to properly interrogate the Aukus deal.

“When you compare the candour and the detail of the disclosure that the US Congress gets from the Department of the Navy, and the fluff we get here, it’s a disgrace. Our parliament has the most at stake, but is the least curious, and the least informed.

On Friday, the defence minister, Richard Marles, told reporters in Sydney “work on Aukus continues apace”.

“We continue to work very closely … with the United States in progressing the optimal pathway to Australia acquiring a nuclear-powered submarine capability,” he said.

“In respect of the production and maintenance schedule in the United States, we continue to make our financial contributions to that industrial base.”

Marles cited the $1.6bn paid to the US to boost its shipbuilding industry already this year, with further payments to come, and said that 120 Australian tradespeople were currently working on sustaining Virginia-class submarines in Pearl Harbor.

“All of that work continues and we are really confident that the production rates will be raised in America, which is very much part of the ambition of Aukus.”

The Guardian put a series of questions to Marles’s office about Caudle’s Senate testimony.

July 28, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | weapons and war | Leave a comment

AUKUS Submarine Regulations: FoE Adelaide submission

Friends of the Earth Adelaide > Publications > Adelaide FoE Notes > AUKUS Submarine Regulations: FoE Adelaide submission

Philip White July 24, 2025, https://adelaidefoe.org/aukus-submarine-regulations-foe-adelaide-submission/

Friends of the Earth Adelaide today (24 July 2025) sent a submission in response to the government’s call for public comments on draft Australian Naval Nuclear Power Safety Regulations. These Regulations were drafted under the Australian Naval Nuclear Power Safety Act, which was passed in October last year. Our submission can be accessed here.

The consultation is open until 30 July 2025. Details can be found on the following web site: https://www.defence.gov.au/about/reviews-inquiries/australian-naval-nuclear-power-safety-regulations-public-consultation

FoE Adelaide’s submission can be summarised as follows:

— AUKUS should be cancelled. It compromises Australia’s sovereignty and is not in our strategic, economic, or environmental interests.

— If it is not cancelled, there should be a proper consultation about the Stirling and Osborne designated zones, which were declared in the Australian Naval Nuclear Power Safety Act without consultation.

— The principles of “free, prior and informed consent” should be followed in siting any site for storage and disposal of radioactive waste.

— That includes respecting laws of State and Territory governments that restrict or prohibit siting of nuclear waste facilities.

— The Regulator must be completely independent of the Defence portfolio. In the current proposal it will be answerable to the Minister for Defence.

— All submissions should be published in full, unless the submitter specifically requests otherwise. Government representatives informed us on 17 July at a public forum in Port Adelaide that they only intend to publish a summary put together by bureaucrats.

July 25, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | weapons and war | Leave a comment

Trillion dollar AUKUS subs plus nuclear waste in perpetuity?

by Rex Patrick | Jul 22, 2025 , https://michaelwest.com.au/trillion-dollar-aukus-subs-plus-nuclear-waste-in-perpetuity/

Everything about AUKUS nuclear waste is a political secret, including the cost, which will more than double the $368B announced AUKUS price tag. Former submariner Rex Patrick with the story.

Rex Patrick with the story.

If we ever get these subs, the total price tag may well be over $1 trillion. I’m in the Federal Court at present, trying to pry open a November 2023 report into how the Government intends to deal with the high-level nuclear waste from AUKUS submarines.

But there’s already a lot we can deduce by combining what has been extracted from the Government using Freedom of Information (FOI) laws, from Senate testimony and also looking at how the United States does and doesn’t take care of its naval nuclear waste.

Cost explosion

For starters, there was a short but insightful exchange in Senate Estimates last year between Senator Lidia Thorpe and the head of the Australian Submarine Agency (ASA), Admiral Jonathon Mead.

After making quick reference to the cost of nuclear waste facilities overseas, Senator Thorpe asked about the waste costs for AUKUS, “There’s no costing as yet; is that right?” Mead responded, “That’s correct”.

For an organisation that is required to cost its capability from cradle to grave, including support facilities, it’s a huge omission. It might be the case that

“they’re too frightened to do the math.”

As I will set out below, the price of safely storing AUKUS waste is likely to double the AUKUS price tag. But first, we need to take a look at what radioactive waste AUKUS will produce and what will be done with it.

Low-level waste

We know that Australia’s nuclear-powered submarines will produce small amounts of low-level waste every year (disposable gloves, wipes, reactor coolant and Personal Protective Equipment). ASA Senate Estimates briefs obtained under FOI suggest that this will amount to “roughly the volume of a small skip bin each year.”

This, along with low-level waste from US and UK submarines operating out of Perth, will be stored at HMAS Stirling until the Australian Waste Management Agency builds and commissions the National Radioactive Waste Management Facility.

Barely noticed by the national media, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Works approved the construction of a ‘Controlled Industrial Facility’ at HMAS Stirling in August 2024.

High-level waste

When each AUKUS submarine decommissions, Australia will need to handle the recovery, transport, storage and disposal of two different types of high-level nuclear waste: spent nuclear fuel, about the size of a small hatchback, and the reactor compartment, about the size of a four-wheel drive.

Noting the total lack of transparency around Australia’s plans, MWM is making a reasonable assessment as to how this waste will be handled by looking to the US.

Fuel rods will be removed from the submarine at a decommissioning yard (possibly Henderson in WA for the Virginia Class and Osborne in SA for the SSN-AUKUS submarines).

The hull is cut open, and a defueling enclosure is installed on the submarine to provide a controlled work area. The fuel is removed into a shielded transfer container and moved to a wharf enclosure. It’s then placed into a specially designed shipping container for transfer to, in the case of the US, an intermediate ‘storage site’ in Idaho. Despite 70 years of nuclear-powered submarine operations (USS Nautilus was commissioned in 1955), the US has not yet sorted out its long-term ‘disposal site’.

It is not clear whether Australia will have an intermediate ‘storage site’ and a ‘disposal site’ or a combined site. Certainly, both storage and disposal are talked about in the information that has been released under FOI.

Australia is not permitted, by the text of the AUKUS Treaty and by commitments made to the International Atomic Energy Agency, to reprocess the fuel. Reprocessing involves separating the plutonium and fissile uranium from the spent fuel to reduce the amount of spent fuel that needs to be stored long term, but doing so raises nuclear weapon proliferation concerns.

For Australia, we have to find a geologically suitable place to bury the fuel in the state it was when it left the submarine. Whilst the Defence Minister has declared this will be on ’Defence land’, the ASA can identify a news site and the Minister can compulsory acquire it – anywhere in Australia.

Reactor compartment

To deal with the reactor compartment, all of the elements of the reactor that will remain in the compartment – the pressure vessel, piping, tanks and fluid system components – are drained to the maximum extent practicable. About 2% of the liquid remains trapped in discrete pockets.

All openings are then sealed.

The reactor compartment is then cut from the submarine, and with the pressure hull remaining as part of the disposal package, the high-strength steel serves as an outer seal.

In the United States, the reactor compartment is transported to “Trench 94” in Washington state.

It is not yet known whether the Australian Government will bury the reactor compartments in a final disposal site.

Looking after high-level nuclear waste is complex. You can’t responsibly just bury it or dump it in a deep mine shaft.

Nuclear waste facility

A waste facility must be carefully located, away from seismic activity, away from flooding and other weather events and generally where geological structure allows for deep, very long-term storage. Geoscience Australia has looked at suitable locations for a high-level radioactive Waste store on occasions between 1976 and 1999 (subject to a National Archives request).

It must also be located with suitable transport pathways from the submarine dismantling yard or possibly several yards.

The site must be prepared and built/bored. It must have access to electricity supplies, water, communications and sewerage. It must allow for the safe receipt and storage of fuel and the reactor compartments, it must be resilient to loss of heating or ventilation, loss of electricity, flow blockages, structural failures, etc.

“It must be resilient for well over a millennium.”

It must also be designed with the necessary security in mind, with access control, constant monitoring, intrusion detection and central alarms in place, and be secure in relation to protest and sabotage and have a co-located response capability. It must provide for safe long-term storage, with multiple barriers in place to prevent release of radioactive material, and be designed to deal with large accidental radioactive releases.

At the same time, the facility will be subject to international non-proliferation safeguards overseen by the International Atomic Energy Agency, which will require periodic access and perhaps remote monitoring and surveillance.

It will likely need a level of remoteness, but be able to be staffed by relevantly qualified personnel, and to receive surge responders in the event of an emergency.

Design and construction would take close to ten years.

What will it take?

The Government has committed to consultation as it selects a site for long-term disposal, yet the law does not require it.

The decision to locate a National Radioactive Waste Management facility at Kimba in South Australia involved a lot of communication, some consultation, but very little listening. The Federal Court ultimately found that the decision-making process for that site was seriously flawed. The Liberals get a D minus.

Labor got the Parliament to declare both HMAS Stirling in Perth and the shipyard precinct at Osborne in Adelaide a ‘designated zone’ for nuclear activities. There was no consultation, so they get an F.

Section 10(2)(c) of the Australian Naval Nuclear Power Safety Act 2024 allows the minister to designate more zones. The consultation can be of a ‘tick-the-box’ nature.

While we don’t know what the cost of an underground storage/disposal facility would be, documents released under FOI show that a 2019 cost estimates study by Altus Expert Services placed the cost of an above ground facility at Kimba at $923 million. We could reasonably expect a deep storage facility could cost billions.

Then there are the ongoing operational costs of the facilities, over several hundred years.

Even at an annual cost of only $30 million per annum, that’s close to $4B over 120 years. And if the site is then sealed for 100,000 years, as the Finnish intend to do with their underground facility, there’s even more cost. Even if monitoring of sealed waste only cost 1/10th of the yearly operating cost, say $3million, the cradle-to-grave cost of dealing with AUKUS high level waste will add up to more than $300 billion; $300B that seems to have slipped ASA’s minds.

One thing’s for sure, there’s been too much secrecy around this radioactive hot potato. Maybe things will fall my way in the Federal Court. But it would be much better if the Government was just be up-front with everyone, particularly as we tax-payers have to pay for it.

Rex Patrick

Rex Patrick is a former Senator for South Australia and, earlier, a submariner in the armed forces. Best known as an anti-corruption and transparency crusader, Rex is also known as the “Transparency Warrior.”

July 24, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | weapons and war | Leave a comment