7 hours ago
22
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.
Notes for Editors
The consultation that the NFLAs responded to can be found at:
Submarine Rotational Force – West, Priority Infrastructure Works
EPBC Number: 2024/10031
The response that the NFLA Secretary submitted reads:
I am responding as Secretary of the UK/Ireland Nuclear Free Local Authorities to this consultation on the proposed nuclear waste storage facility at HMAS Stirling Base in Rockingham, Western Australia.
This facility will receive low and (potentially) intermediate radioactive waste from nuclear-powered submarines visiting the base from the Royal Navy and United States Navy, as well as the Australian Navy.
Firstly, we object to the proposal in principle the strongest possible terms on two grounds:
The deployment of such submarines, with their unlimited range providing for prolonged offensive operations in the Pacific Ocean, will increase tensions, and the prospects of a regional war, with China and also increase the risk of a military counterstrike against the naval base, which will impact the surrounding civilian population. If such a counterstrike were to be carried out with a nuclear weapon, such an impact would be catastrophic.
Furthermore, the deployment of nuclear powered, conventionally armed submarines contravenes the spirit of an international treaty to which Australia is a signatory: the Treaty of Rarotonga, which established a South Pacific nuclear-free zone. If such submarines are also nuclear armed, then this would represent a clear breach of the Treaty, which bans the use, testing and possession of nuclear weapons by signatory states.
We also note that such activity also contradicts the commendable nuclear free zone policy adopted by the City of Fremantle and its endorsement of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons’ appeal for cities to support the Treaty to Ban Nuclear Weapons.
Rather than taking the retrograde step of accommodating foreign nuclear submarines at Australian naval bases and seeking possession of Australian nuclear submarines, we would instead urge the Federal Government to abandon AUKUS and instead work for peace in the Pacific by continuing to honouring its commitment to the Treaty of Rarotonga, and become a signatory to the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
Though we recognise that these aims may sadly remain aspirational, we are nonetheless concerned that the decision to establish this radioactive waste storage site was made without full disclosure of the facts, without proper public consultation and without the completion of any full environmental assessment of the impact of its operation.
The proposed waste site at Garden Island is in one of the most pristine and diverse environments in the Perth region. The movements of nuclear submarines and the operation of a nuclear waste storage site will affect access to Cockburn Sound and Garden Island. There have also been misleading claims that the waste will only be radioactively low-level, despite the fact that the Australian Submarine Agency made a counter claim to Federal legislators that it could also be intermediate level. Nor do we know how much waste will be stored and for how long, and what the Federal Government proposes as its long-term storage solution.
I therefore end by urging the Australian Government to commit to full consultation, full disclosure and commissioning a full environmental assessment before pursing this regrettable development further.
Thank you.
The coalition ‘Stop AUKUS WA’ exists to oppose the plan:
Stop AUKUS WA works to increase community awareness of the public health, safety and environmental risks of naval nuclear reactors and nuclear waste storage.
The campaign calls for a Nuclear Free Cockburn Sound – No Nuke Subs!
