US, UK building a “nuclear rubbish dump Down Under”

Alameen Templeton

Australian environmentalists are worried the country could become a nuclear dumping ground for the US and the UK after they signed an agreement allowing “nuclear substances” to be transferred down under.
On the face of it, the agreement is necessary to keep Australia’s eight new, US-manufactured submarines running because it allows the transfer from the US and the UK of parts and spares needed for routine maintenance and repairs.
But both the US and UK are battling to dispose of their nuclear waste on home soil because their citizens fear contamination in their back yard.
Australian activists fear it’s a matter of “Better someone else’s back yard; someone like Australia which is mainly desert country with large, uninhabited parts where no one is likely to notice a nuclear waste facility.”
Al Mayadeen reports, if the Australian Naval Nuclear Power Safety Bill is enacted, it will create a nuclear safety watchdog and “naval nuclear propulsion facilities”, including those for storing and disposing of “radioactive waste from AUKUS submarines”.
It’s the “AUKUS submarines” part that has environmentalists walking on eggs. The clause could imply or open the door to the US and the UK transferring waste from their submarines to Australia.
Also jangling the alarm bells is the way the US and UK bent over backwards in 2019 to “steal” the $66billion (R1 217trillion) submarine contract from Nato ally France. They have opened up “a wound that won’t heal”, according to some defence analysts. Were they willing to sacrifice a trusted partner in order to push through a nuclear waste disposal deal under the counter?
The deal has also outraged China that is alarmed at the prospect of a nuclear danger rising on its southern ocean front.
Reuters and the New York Times report the agreement, aimed at beefing up the Western military presence in the South China Sea, constitutes a challenge to Beijing in the region. The upshot will be patrols by Australian submarines from the South China Sea all the way to Taiwan.
As Israel Defence noted at the time: “The responses have been harsh. China expressed concern over a nuclear arms race and instability. France was deeply insulted – not only was it not told in advance about the new deal, but it lost a giant contract to manufacture submarines for Australia. And for the first time in history, France recalled its ambassadors to Washington and Canberra. “
Paris was incensed at the time. Sydney cancelled its 2016 deal with France, also valued at $66billion, in order to open the door to the US and UK, with Germany as a silent partner. According to the tripartite agreement, the eight submarines will be built in Germany using American and British technologies.
Germany doesn’t have a nuclear waste disposal problem any more because it decommissioned its nuclear energy plants after the 2011 Fukushima disaster.
Dave Sweeney, the Australian Conservation Foundation’s Nuclear Free campaigner, called the issue of waste disposal “highly disturbing” and that the AUKUS partners would consider Australia as “a little bit of a radioactive terra nullius.”
“Terra nullius”, by the way, means “a land without a people” and we all know how such thinking can lead to headaches that last a century.
The legislation permits the establishment of facilities for “managing, storing, or disposing of radioactive waste from an Aukus submarine,” defining an AUKUS submarine as either an Australian or a UK/US submarine and “includes such a submarine that is not complete (for example, because it is being constructed or disposed of).”
But the construction of new submarines and the transfer of active US and UK ones to Australia will only see the vessels taking to Australian waters 10 to 15 years from now.
The question activists are asking is “will the nuclear waste sites start working long before the first, new Australian submarine gets wet”? In other words: will US and UK nuclear waste start arriving first – an indicator or the real intent of the deal.