Trillion dollar AUKUS subs plus nuclear waste in perpetuity?

Everything about Aukus nuclear waste is a political secret, including a cost of more than twice the price tag of $ 368 billion. Old submarine Rex Patrick With the story.

If we buy this subs, the total price tag may be above $ 1 trillion. I am currently trying to open a report in the federal court about how the government plans to cope with senior nuclear waste from AUKUS submarines.

However, by using the laws of freedom of knowledge (FOI), there is a lot of things that we can remove by using Senate testimonies and how the United States deals with and does not look at sea nuclear waste, combining the government by using the laws of freedom of information (FOI).

Cost explosion

For beginners, there was a short but understanding change in the senate forecasts between Senator Lidia Thorpe and Australian submarine agency (ASA) President Admiral Jonathon Mead last year.

After quickly referring to the cost of nuclear waste facilities abroad, Senator Thorpe asked Aukus’s waste costs about the waste costs, “Isn’t there a cost yet; this is true?” “This is true,” Mead replied.

This is a great neglect for an organization that should be capable of capability from cradle to grave, including support facilities. This may be the case

They are very afraid to do mathematics.

As I will appear below, the price of safe storage of AUKUS waste is likely to double the AUKUS price tag. But first, we have to take a look at what radioactive waste will produce and what to do with it.

Nuclear waste. Reckless indifference of AUKUS Agency

Low -level waste

We know that Australia’s nuclear energy submarines will produce small amounts of low levels each year (disposable gloves, handkerchiefs, reactor cooler and personal protective equipment). The ASA Senate estimates that the briefings obtained within the scope of FOI will be the volume of a small jump garbage box every year ”.

This will be kept in HMAS Stirling up to the commissions, creating the national radioactive waste management facility of the Australian Waste Management Agency, along with low -level wastes from the UK submarines operating outside the United States and Perth.

It was barely noticed by the national media, the Permanent Committee of Public Works Parliament approved The construction of a ‘controlled industrial facility’ in August 2024 in HMAS Stirling.

High -level waste

When each AUKUS has submarine decormissions, Australia will have to deal with the recovery, transportation, storage and disposal of two different types of high -level nuclear waste species: a small nuclear fuel is the size of a small hatchback and the reactor compartment, four -wheel drive size.

To draw attention to total lack of transparency around Australia’s plans, MWM Looking at the US, he makes a reasonable assessment of how to handle these wastes.

Fuel sticks will be released in the garden of the submarine in the garden of the submarine (probably Osborne for the Virginia class for Henderson and SSN-AUKUS submarines).

The body is opened and a disorder is established to the submarine to provide a controlled work area. It is taken to a fuel -protected transfer container and moved to a scaffolding. It is then placed in a specially designed shipping container for the transfer to the ‘storage area’ in Idaho in the USA. Despite the 70 -year -old nuclear -energy submarine operations (USS Nautilus was commissioned in 1955), the US has not yet solved the long -term ‘disposal site’.

It is not clear whether Australia has a ‘storage area’ and a ‘disposal site’ or a combined site. Of course, the information published under FOI is discussed about both storage and disposal.

Australia, the Treaty of AUKUS and the International Atomic Energy Agency is not allowed to re -process fuel. Re -processing involves the separation of plutonium and fissil uranium from used fuel to reduce the amount of fuel that needs to be stored in the long term, but doing so increases nuclear weapon proliferation concerns.

For Australia, when it leaves the submarine, we must find a geologically suitable place to bury the fuel in the state. While the Defense Minister declares that this would be a ‘defense land’, ASA may set a news site and the Minister may obtain it anywhere in Australia.

Reactor compartment

In order to cope with the reactor compartment, all elements of the reactor to remain in the compartment – pressure doors, pipes, tanks and liquid system components – are discharged to the maximum possible extent possible. Approximately 2% of the liquid is stuck in separate pockets.

All openings are then sealed.

The reactor compartment is then cut from the submarine and acts as a high -strength steel external seal with the pressure body that remains part of the disposal package.

The reactor compartment was separated (Source: US Department of Defense)

In the United States, the reactor compartment is moved to the Trench 94 in Nevada.

It is not yet known whether the Australian government will bury the reactor compartments in a final disposal area.

Looking at high -level nuclear waste is complex. You cannot be responsible or pour it into a deep mine shaft.

Nuclear waste plant

A waste plant should be placed carefully from seismic activity, far from flood and other weather events, and where the geological structure allows deep, long -term storage. On the occasions between 1976-1999, Geoscience Australia looked at the appropriate places for a high-level radioactive waste store (subject to national archive demand).

It should also be found from the submarine dismantling garden or possibly with appropriate ways of transportation.

The site should be prepared and built/squeezed. Electrical materials, water, communication and access to sewage. It should allow fuel and reactor compartments to be taken and stored safely, loss of heating or ventilation, loss of electricity, flow blockage, structural failures and so on.

It should be flexible over a millennium.

In addition, access control, continuous monitoring, attack detection and central alarms should be designed with the ability to be safe for protest and sabotage, and the ability to respond together, but should be designed considering the necessary safety. To prevent the release of radioactive material, it should provide safe long -term storage with multiple obstacles and designed to cope with large accidental radioactive emissions.

At the same time, the facility will be subject to international international release measures, which are controlled by the international atomic energy agency, which will require periodic access and perhaps remote monitoring and surveillance.

It will probably need a level of distance, but it can be assigned by relevant qualified personnel and can take fluctuating interventions in case of emergency.

Design and construction will last up to ten years.

What will it take?

The government decided to consult for a site for long -term disposal, but the law does not require it.

The decision to find a national radioactive waste management facility in Kimba in Southern Australia included too much communication, some advice, but very little listening. The Federal Court ultimately found that the decision -making process for this site is seriously defective. The liberals get a d minus.

Labor enabled the parliament to declare both HMA Stirling at Perth and the shipyard region in Osborne in Adelaide a ‘designated region’ for nuclear activities. There was no consultation, so they get a F.

10 (2) (c) of the 2024 Australian Naval Nuclear Power Safety Law allows the minister to assign more zones. Consultation may be in the nature of ‘box-boat’.

AUKUS WASTE PLANS. Hitchhiking Nuclear Confirmations Guide

Although we do not know what the cost of an underground storage/disposal facility will be, the documents published within the scope of FOI show that the cost estimates of the 2019 cost forecasts made by Altus expert services place the cost of a above -ground facility for $ 923 million in Kimba. We can expect that a reasonable storage facility may cost billion.

Radioactivity in a reactor facility and time after the last procedure – (Source: USA DOD)

Then for a few hundred years, facilities have ongoing operational costs.

Even at a cost of only $ 30 million annually, this is close to $ 4B for 120 years. And if the site is sealed for 100,000 years, there is even more cost because it wants to build with Finland underground facilities. Monitoring of sealed wastes, even if it costs only 1/10 of the annual operating cost, will add more than $ 300 billion of the cradle-grace cost of dealing with high-level wastes of AUKUS; He seems to have shifted Asa’s mind.

There is certainly there was a lot of privacy around this radioactive hot potatoes. Maybe things will fall on my way in the federal court. However, it would be much better for the government to stand out with everyone, especially because we had to pay taxpayers for this.

Hidden AUKUS Nuclear Waste Site Documents Cabinet Locking

Rex Patrick is a former senator of South Australia and a submarine in the armed forces. Rex, known as the best fight against corruption and transparency crusaders, “Transparent warrior. “