AUKUS was a first clue. A whole pile of blather, cooked up between the US military establishment and Australia’s former disastrous Morrison Coalition government, that essentially boils down to Australia agreeing to subsidise, at great cost, the deployment and operation in the Asia-Pacific region of what will effectively be US-controlled nuclear submarines. To me this looked like the radioactive thin edge of an atomic wedge.
Straight away my mind went back to 2005, when former Labor PM Bob Hawke (another great friend of the US military establishment) gave a speech suggesting that Australia should accept large quantities of high-level nuclear waste from overseas. Hawke – in my opinion clearly acting as a mouthpiece for US lobbyists and interests – argued that Australia had an obligation to accept such waste, since it was already a major exporter of uranium. Also, charging other countries for taking their hazardous waste off their hands could be a great financial boon for Australia, he said. Really, Hawke was only picking up where the British Government, through its British Nuclear Fuels organisation, had left off after its Pangea Resources gambit had failed in the 1990s.
Ever since then, I’ve been waiting for the supporters of this idea to make their next moves. And now they have, and they are moving fast and pushing hard. Like the AUKUS submarine brainfart to which it is closely related, the issue is – I believe – being surrounded by a smokescreen of confusion and deceit. The main trick is the apparent push by Coalition leader Peter Dutton for nuclear reactors in Australia. This is, of course, being supported by the Murdoch media/propaganda apparatus which is always first on board with whatever program being promoted by the US defence establishment and/or global corporate interests. The ragged and increasingly partisan remnants of the former Fairfax press and the poor Murdochracised ABC are scarcely any better.
Nukes are great kites for Dutton to fly. Recently asked for my opinion on why he might think this apparent policy would be politically good for him, I opined that it plays nicely into the fears of many of Australia’s mug punters that the dithering of governments in the face of what we are told is a looming bottleneck in baseload electricity supply is going to result in widespread blackouts and consequent domestic inconvenience.
Nuclear reactors aren’t the answer to this problem as I am sure Dutton is well aware. They cost far too much to build, are nightmares to decommission at the end of their lives, won’t produce enough power to meet demand and – more to the point – can’t be on the scene fast enough to be worth bothering about. But the mug punter’s fear of blackouts makes the idea of nukes easier to sell. And really, it’s a policy that Dutton and his party can walk back from any time they like, once the power bottleneck problem is solved – as it will be – by the growth and more effective integration of renewables. In the meantime the idea will serve to get the mugs squabbling and squawking, which plays nicely into the hands of some of Australia’s notoriously self-entitled billionaires, as Kangaroo Court of Australia writer Shane Dowling nicely explains in this piece. Of course the fossil fuel interests which dominate Australian politics want renewables hobbled and a long foolish debate about nukes may serve to do that job very well. But as a “bonus” I fear it will also help boost the case for what may well be the real prize in the eyes of some – an Australian dump for the world’s nuclear waste.
Nukes are not the answer
In case you hadn’t noticed, the AUKUS deal that will see US and UK submarines rotating through Australian ports in the near future includes a proviso that Australia will also build facilities to handle and store nuclear waste from these vessels. Over the years Australia hasn’t been able to find an appropriate site for storing its own small quantities of low-level nuclear waste, but it looks like our agreement to pay for US submarines will finally force the issue. And from there, I predict, it will be a short step to handling other imported nuclear waste and bringing Bob Hawke’s 2005 proposal to fruition.
The pro-nuclear lobby never sleeps. It is always hunting for opportunities to further its agenda and always getting in the ears of Australian politicians, journalists and others. Not surprising when one considers the huge money involved. Given the abysmal record of Australian politicians in resisting the lure of big bucks – think Coal, gas, gambling, the banking industry etc etc etc – you can see how this is going down. In NSW the push to repeal the state’s ban on uranium mining and nuclear facility construction is a constant. In South Australia in 2016 a controversial and allegedly stacked Royal Commision into the “nuclear fuel cycle” was held. Unsurprisingly it found that the economics of nuclear reactors didn’t add up. Equally unsurprisingly, it was upbeat about expanding uranium mining and quite keen on the idea of South Australia offering itself as a nuclear dump for the rest of the world. The idea was quashed at the time but you can depend on it coming back again, like any good zombie.
Australian governments have been generally very stupid when it comes to questions of energy security. Think the Howard Government boasting about how it let big gas companies export most of Australia’s gas at lunatic prices. Think the NSW Labor government flogging off the state’s power stations, energy retail industry and state-owned coalmines for a relative song, abdicating its responsibility and losing its opportunity to upgrade and improve the system and manage the inevitable transition to a vastly more decentralised structure featuring huge renewable inputs. Borderline criminal, if you ask me, especially when you consider how later governments have had to go, cap in hand, to keep those same plants running and to buy coal from once-public mines at stupid prices. Oh, and I wonder what’s happened to Australia’s “strategic petroleum reserve” – apparently stored in the USA?
If the nuclear lobby gets its way and Australia becomes one of the world’s major dumping grounds for nuclear waste I will bet pounds to peanuts the result will be at least as disastrous as every other attempt everywhere else in the world so far to safely store this hazardous material. Here’s some background reading on the topic. This major report, focusing on Europe, spells it out with great and disturbing clarity.
Meanwhile, have a look at Germany’s waste problem here. And part of Japan’s nuclear waste problem here. Here’s one from Scotland. And one from England. The USA is looking for an answer to its problem, as you can read here. And let’s not forget France.
One can imagine how thrilled the nations of the collective “West” would be if Australia put up its hand and agreed to be the world’s nuclear waste dump. I won’t be surprised if the AUKUS submarine scam proves to be the key that opens the door to that disastrous outcome.
