Australia’s nuclear regulator greenlit the Australian Submarine Agency (ASA) on July 17 to proceed with plans for a nuclear waste storage facility at HMAS Stirling Base in Rockingham, Western Australia.
ASA applied in March to the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA) to prepare such a site, also known as a “Controlled Industrial Facility”.
Without it, visiting United States and British nuclear-powered submarines could not undertake maintenance in Australia, making it an intrinsic part of the AUKUS military pact.
Greens Senator David Shoebridge said Labor is caught in a bind because its bill to allow the US and Britain to dump high-level nuclear waste in Australia has been tabled but it does not want to allow debate as Opposition leader Peter Dutton is spruiking his civil nuclear plan.
Labor’s Australian Naval Nuclear Power Safety Bill 2023, introduced in March, sets out the framework for a regulator — the Australian Naval Nuclear Power Safety Regulator (ANNPSR) — to manage US and British dumping of high-level nuclear waste.
Until it becomes law (and it will as the Coalition supports all things nuclear), ARPANSA will regulate nuclear and radiological safety for ASA.
ARPANSA said on July 17 the licence “intends” to cover low-level waste from the submarines.
Shoebridge disputes this. He said ASA admitted in a Senate Estimates hearing in June that the licence would also cover “intermediate-level” nuclear waste, which emits higher levels of radiation and requires additional shielding.
ASA had “failed to include in its public consultation material the fact that this licence allows for the handling of intermediate-level waste”, Shoebridge said.
“This waste is significantly more toxic than any other nuclear waste currently stored in Australia.”
He said the licence was “quietly pushed through” and resembled a “rushed plan B” from Labor, which is trying to avoid political backlash to its naval nuclear waste bill while Dutton spruiks his civil nuclear plan.
The regulation allows authorities to prepare to accept nuclear waste without more public or parliamentary scrutiny on the proposed law.
ARPANSA sought to downplay the regulation, saying it is just the “first stage” of a “stringent licensing process” for new naval nuclear propulsion facilities and, in the future, for storing or disposing of radioactive waste from AUKUS submarines.
Contradicts nuclear-free policy
Critics of AUKUS and the Rotational Force — West program have warned against nuclear-powered and -armed submarines berthing at HMAS Stirling Naval Base.
They are worried at the prospect of any mishaps and the submarines would have to traverse the ecologically rich Cockburn Sound inlet.
The regulation also contradicts the long-time 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.
The Conservation Council of WA (CCWA) is among many groups and individuals opposing the AUKUS-inspired plan.
CCWA’s June submission to ARPANSA said the proposed nuclear submarine facility is “within an area of dense population” and close to “important and diverse heavy industrial facilities, including a major shipping port”.
“There are unaddressed community concerns regarding an accident involving the dispersal of radioactive material,” it said. In addition, there has been a “lack of transparency and rigour in the proposed regulatory processes”. It said allowing for US and British nuclear submarine waste is “unacceptable” either at Garden Island “or elsewhere in Western Australia”.
ARPANSA received 165 public submissions concerning its application to prepare a site at HMAS Stirling, but did not reveal how many were opposed.
However, its response to concerns, published on July 17, shows many were, including because of the lack of public information, community and ecological impacts and decision-making.
However, it concluded that: “Overall, we found that there were no submissions that justified refusal of the licence” and that “the application provided sufficient evidence of the radiological safety of the proposed facility”.
Dorinda Cox, WA Greens Senator and spokesperson for First Nations, Resources, North Australia and Trade and Tourism said the licence approval “silences our voices”.
She said Labor wants to make anywhere in Australia a nuclear waste dumping ground, with no public consultation or First Nations’s consent.
Cox said she was given assurances that there would be consultation but “there has been no respect shown to the community and to Traditional Owners who opposed this licence”.
She said First Nations peoples have seen nuclear storage “devastate their lands, waterways and communities before.
“This storage is costly and will destroy irreplaceable cultural heritage, including intangible heritage such as song lines and the local biodiversity.”
Ian Lowe, an expert on radiation health and safety, and who served on the Expert Advisory Committee for the South Australia Royal Commission on the Nuclear Industry, has been a vocal critic of Labor committing to AUKUS without having a nuclear waste disposal solution.
In The Conversation in March last year he said: “With this [AUKUS] deal, we have committed ourselves to managing highly radioactive reactor waste when these submarines are decommissioned — and guarding it, given the fuel for these submarines is weapons-grade uranium.”
When nuclear submarines are decommissioned, the reactor is treated as waste.
He said the White House’s fact sheet about AUKUS 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” includes pulling out and disposing of Virginia-class submarine reactors.
“Small, in this context, is relative,” Lowe said. “It’s small compared to nuclear power plants. But it weighs over 100 tonnes and contains around 200 kilograms of highly enriched uranium, which is nuclear weapons-grade material.”
He said 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 so-called “spent fuel” and “potentially tonnes of irradiated material from the reactor and its protective walls”.
“Because the fuel is weapons-grade material, it will need military-scale security.”
Australia’s failure, for decades, to find a single site for disposal of low-level radioactive waste, is because “every single proposal has run into strong local opposition”.
The plan to locate a dump at Kimba, on South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula, had to be dropped after opposition by local communities and First Nations groups.
“And we’re still dithering about what to do with the intermediate level waste produced by the OPAL research reactor at Lucas Heights in Sydney.”
He said even the AUKUS allies have “not figured out long-term waste storage”.
As Sweden and Finland build storage systems in stable rock layers, neither Britain or the United States have moved beyond temporary storage.”