Defence Minister Richard Marles has maintained that Australia will not take nuclear waste from other countries under the AUKUS deal, as the Greens claim that proposed new safety laws will create a legal basis for storing nuclear waste from US and UK submarines.
Marles last month introduced the Australian Naval Nuclear Power Safety Bill into the parliament, which sets out a new framework, including a nuclear safety watchdog, to regulate the operation of Australia’s AUKUS submarine program.
The bill sets out three types of “regulated activities” – facility activity, submarine activity and material activity – and provides for the creation of “naval nuclear propulsion (NNP) facilities” in designated zones, including for the purpose of “managing, storing or disposing of radioactive waste from an AUKUS submarine”.
It further defines “material activities” as including “maintaining, storing or disposing of NNP material or NNP equipment or plant in a designated zone or an Australian submarine.”
Speaking in the parliament on November 16, Marles said the bill would ensure “Australia maintains the highest level of nuclear safety in respect of nuclear-powered submarines” and the new framework would be “harmonised with other schemes, including those relating to work health and safety, nuclear nonproliferation and civilian nuclear safety”.
However, the Greens argue that because the bill defines AUKUS submarines as including both an Australian submarine or a UK or US submarine, it sets up a framework for future governments to allow US and UK nuclear waste to be stored in Australia.
In response to questions about the bill, a spokeswoman for Marles dismissed the Greens’ claims and pointed to his previous comments ruling out the possibility of Australia taking nuclear waste from other countries, but did not address the substance of the bill’s wording.
“This is just another example of the Greens party doing nothing more than fear-mongering,” the spokeswoman said.
“This was an issue raised at the time of the [AUKUS] announcement in March and answered then, and consistently since that time. The Greens continue to argue against AUKUS, and want to stand in the way of jobs, productivity, economic growth and our national security.”
The Australian Labor Party platform includes a section on nuclear safety that states “Australia will not be responsible for disposing spent nuclear fuel or accept other high-level radioactive waste from any other country.”
Asked in an interview with ABC TV’s Insiders program in March about how the ALP platform fit with the AUKUS deal, Marles said: “we’re not talking about establishing a civil nuclear industry, nor are we talking about opening Australia up as a repository for nuclear waste from other countries.”
Greens defence spokesman David Shoebridge said the text of the bill contradicted Labor’s position.
“It’s always best to judge a government on what it does, not what it says, and the legislation Labor has introduced opens the door to receiving US and UK nuclear waste,” Shoebridge said.
“Whatever the policy position of the Albanese government is, why would they press for legislation that allows a future Coalition government to make Australia an international nuclear-dumping ground?”
The Greens are opposed to the AUKUS security pact, sealed in 2021, under which Australia has agreed to purchase between three and five Virginia-class submarines from the US, with the first slated for arrival in the early 2030s, before it begins construction on a new class of British-designed nuclear-powered submarines known as SSN-AUKUS. On Friday, the US Congress passed legislation approving the sale of three Virginia class submarines to Australia.
Peter Dean, director of foreign policy and defence at the United States Studies Centre said he did not believe the bill was drafted to facilitate Australia receiving nuclear waste from the US or UK.
Instead, he said it was designed to cover the complex interplay in the building and transferring of intellectual property about the submarines between the countries.
“This is about ensuring that we have the greatest level of flexibility in the system to account for all potential options, pathways, and variations of the building, construction and transfer and sale of submarines between the three countries,” he said.
Dean pointed out that under the government’s “optimal pathway”, Australia’s locally built nuclear-powered submarines would be built with American reactor technology that is developed by Rolls-Royce in the UK.
Peter Jennings, a former deputy secretary for strategy in the defence department, said it would be decades before Australia would have to deal with the waste from either class of submarines due to their design because the nuclear reactors remain sealed until the boat is decommissioned. But he said the preparatory work and the building of storage facilities would need to start well in advance of this date.
“The only occasion where this sort of waste repository issue becomes a factor is when a boat is decommissioned, the reactor is taken out of the hull, then the rods are stored, and that will be several decades beyond when we actually get the boats themselves,” said Jennings, who is the director of defence think tank Strategic Analysis Australia.
“It is going take literally tens of defence ministers and probably half a dozen or more prime ministers before we’re at a point where someone’s going to be opening this kind of [nuclear storage] facility. It’s just one of those generationally long, politically fraught exercises.”
The nuclear safety bill will be scrutinised by the Senate’s Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Legislation Committee, which is scheduled to report by April 26.
