Prime minister Scott Morrison insisted on Thursday morning that the landmark nuclear submarine deal struck with US president Joe Biden and UK prime minister Boris Johnson won’t translate into a push for nuclear power plants in Australia.
“Let me be clear: Australia is not seeking to establish nuclear weapons or establish a civil nuclear capability. And we will continue to meet all of our nuclear non-proliferation obligations,” Morrison said.
On the issue of nuclear power plants, don’t believe him. Morrison could hardly have said anything else. It’s one thing to announce a switch to nuclear powered submarines without any broad social discussion, but quite another to commit the country to nuclear power.
But the pro-nuclear lobby – both within and without the federal Coalition government – won’t be able to help themselves, even if the reality is that the sub construction won’t likely even start for the best part of a decade, and be complete for at least another 10 years after that, such is the complexity of the technology.
The nuclear lobby will say it is bizarre that Australia could be the only country in the world planning to sustain a nuclear powered submarine fleet without a civil nuclear industry. Even the retired Admiral Chris Barry noted that the absence of a civil nuclear industry left a “big gap” for Australia to manage a submerged nuclear fleet.

Giles Parkinson, Reneweconomy

Following secret deliberations, this week, the Morrison government has announced that Australia will acquire nuclear-powered submarines. Anti-nuclear movement stalwart, and Friends of the Earth National Nuclear campaigner, Dr. Jim Green, had these comments to common questions about the decision.

Are there alternatives?

Apart from the French built, fossil fuel diesel options already on the table,  because the process has been entirely secret, we have no way of knowing whether alternative options have been properly considered. These include the options of building fewer submarines (or none at all), and advanced lithium-ion battery technology to power submarines (South Korea’s choice after 30 months of comprehensive evaluation).

What about nuclear weapons and security?

Nuclear powered submarines typically use highly-enriched uranium (HEU) fuel. This would undermine global efforts to phase out the use of HEU because of WMD proliferation and security concerns.

The Nobel Peace Prize-winning International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons notes: “Military nuclear reactors in Australia would present a clear nuclear weapons proliferation risk and become potential sites for nuclear accidents and radiological contamination long into the future.”

The government wants to build nuclear submarines in suburban Adelaide. Does that put a target on our back? Is it prudent to build nuclear submarines in a city of 1.3 million people? What alternative locations have been considered, if any?

Does the government secretly want to bring Australia closer to a nuclear weapons capability with a nuclear submarine program? Do such deliberations explain why the Morrison government refuses to sign the UN’s Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and has actively undermined the Treaty at every step? (In the late 1960s, John Gorton’s government actively pursued a nuclear power program and Gorton later acknowledged a hidden weapons agenda. Gorton actively opposed Australia signing the UN’s Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.) … Read more >>