When Australia \u2013 vassal be thy name \u2013 assumed responsibilities for not only throwing money at both US and British shipbuilders, lending up territory and naval facilities for war like a gambling drunk, and essentially asking its officials to commit seppuku for the Imperium, another task was given. While the ditzy and dunderheaded wonders in Canberra would be acquiring submarines with nuclear propulsion technology, there would be that rather problematic issue of what to do with the waste. \u201cYes,\u201d said the obliging Australians, \u201cwe will deal with it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Australian Defence Department has published a fact sheet<\/a> on the matter, which, as all such fact sheets go, fudges the facts and sports a degree of misplaced optimism. It promises a \u201csophisticated security and safety architecture\u201d around the nuclear-powered submarine program, \u201cbuilding on our 70-year unblemished track record of operating nuclear facilities and conducting nuclear science activities.\u201d <\/p>\n This record, which is rather more blemished than officials would care to admit, does not extend to the specific issues arising from maintaining a nuclear-powered submarine fleet and the high-level waste that would require shielding and cooling. In the context of such a vessel, this would entail pulling out and disposing of the reactor once the submarine is decommissioned. <\/p>\n Australia\u2019s experience, to date, only extends<\/a> to the storage of low-level waste and intermediate-level waste arising from nuclear medicine and laboratory research, with the low-level variant being stored at over a hundred sites in the country. That situation has been regarded as unsustainable and politically contentious.<\/p>\n The department admits that the storage and disposal of such waste and spent fuel will require necessary facilities and trained personnel, appropriate transport, interim and permanent storage facilities and \u201csocial license earned and sustained with local and regional communities.\u201d But it also notes that the UK and the US \u201cwill assist Australia in developing this capability, leveraging Australia\u2019s decades of safely and securely managing radioactive waste domestically\u201d.<\/p>\n That\u2019s mighty good of them to do so, given that both countries have failed to move beyond the problem of temporary storage. In the UK, the issue of disposing waste from decommissioned nuclear submarines remains stuck<\/a> in community consultation. In the US, no option has emerged after the Obama administration killed off<\/a> a repository program to store waste underneath Nevada\u2019s Yucca Mountain. The reasons for doing so, sulked Republicans at the time, were political rather than technical. <\/p>\n Where, then, will the facilities to store and dispose of such waste be located? \u201cDefence \u2013 working with relevant agencies including the Australian Radioactive Waste Agency \u2013 will undertake a review in 2023 to identify locations in the current or future Defence estate that could be suitable to store and dispose of intermediate-level waste and high-level waste, including spent fuel.\u201d<\/p>\n The various state premiers are already suggesting that finding a site will be problematic. Both Victoria and Western Australia are pointing fingers at South Australia as the logical option, while Queensland has declared that \u201cunder no circumstances\u201d would it permit nuclear waste to be stored. \u201cI think the waste can go where all the jobs are going,\u201d remarked<\/a> Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews. \u201cI don\u2019t think that\u2019s unreasonable, is it?\u201d <\/p>\n Western Australia\u2019s Mark McGowan, in furious agreement, suggested<\/a> that a site \u201csomewhere remote, somewhere with very good long-term geological structure that doesn\u2019t change or move and somewhere that is defence lands\u201d narrowed down the options. \u201c[T]hat\u2019s why Woomera springs to mind.\u201d<\/p>\n South Australia\u2019s Premier, Peter Malinauskas, insists<\/a> that the waste should go \u201cwhere it is in the nation\u2019s interest to put it\u201d and not be a matter of \u201csome domestic political tit-for-tat, or some state-based parochial thing.\u201d <\/p>\n When it comes to storing nuclear waste, parochialism is all but guaranteed. The Australian government is already facing a legal challenge from traditional owners regarding a 2021 decision to locate a nuclear waste site at Kimba in South Australia. The effort to find a site for the National Radioactive Waste Management Facility intended for low and intermediate radioactive waste produced by the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation at Lucas Heights, New South Wales, took three decades.<\/p>\n According to members of the First Nations group opposing the decision, the proposed facility risks interfering with a sacred site for women. Dawn Taylor, a Barngarla woman and Kimba resident, told<\/a> the ABC that, \u201cThe Seven Sisters is through that area.\u201d She feared that the waste facility would end up \u201cdestroying\u201d the stories associated with the dreaming.<\/p>\n The federal resources minister, Madeleine King, has stated<\/a> with little conviction that a cultural heritage management plan \u201cinformed by the research of the Barngarla people\u201d is in place. \u201cThere are strict protocols around the work that is going on right now to make sure there is no disturbance of cultural heritage.\u201d<\/p>\n Local farmers, including the consistently vocal Peter Woolford, are also opposed<\/a> to the project. \u201cWe just can\u2019t understand why you would expose this great agricultural industry we have here in grain production to any potential risk at all by having a nuclear waste dump here.\u201d<\/p>\n The Australian security establishment may well be glorifying in the moment of AUKUS, itself an insensibly parochial gesture of provocation and regional destabilisation, but agitated residents and irate state politicians are promising a good deal of sensible mischief. <\/p>The post Spent Matters: The AUKUS Nuclear Waste Problem<\/a> first appeared on Dissident Voice<\/a>.\n This post was originally published on Dissident Voice<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When Australia \u2013 vassal be thy name \u2013 assumed responsibilities for not only throwing money at both US and British shipbuilders, lending up territory and naval facilities for war like a gambling drunk, and essentially asking its officials to commit seppuku for the Imperium, another task was given. While the ditzy and dunderheaded wonders in [\u2026]<\/p>\n The post Spent Matters: The AUKUS Nuclear Waste Problem<\/a> first appeared on Dissident Voice<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175,393,14219,165,686,167],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1029894"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1029894"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1029894\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1029895,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1029894\/revisions\/1029895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1029894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1029894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1029894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}