Activists Condemn Dangers From Maintenance For USS Hawaii At HMAS Stirling

“The Sydney Anti-AUKUS Coalition (SAAC) fully supports the protests of people at Rockingham, Fremantle and Perth, and around Australia, at the August 23 docking of the US nuclear-powered attack submarine Hawaii at HMAS Stirling, just 50 kilometres south of Perth Central Business District, to undergo intermediate level maintenance,” said spokesperson Peter Murphy.

“This is AUKUS in action, as our Prime Minister and Defence Minister celebrated when they visited HMAS Stirling on September 2. But we condemn it because it commits Australia to join a catastrophic US war against China,” Murphy said. “It makes HMAS Stirling a nuclear target in the even to war between the US and China.”

SAAC opposes both AUKUS Pillar 1 -nuclear-powered submarines, and Pillar 2, the development of advanced weapons technologies using Artificial Intelligence and quantum computing, hypersonic missiles, underwater drones, and advanced cyber capabilities. SAAC opposes the AUKUS push for weapons manufacturing, particularly in Geelong, Port Adelaide, the Illawarra and some Queensland cities.

The maintenance work on the Hawaii is supported by a specialised US ship and carried out by combined US and Australian personnel. This is the first time non-US personnel have done this work, and the first time away from US territory.

The Australian Submarine Agency (ASA) has been granted a licence by the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA) to establish a ‘Controlled Industrial Facility’ to handle the waste of US and UK nuclear submarines that will dock at HMAS Stirling from 2027.

The Hawaii is a Virginia-class submarine, and the Albanese government has arranged to buy at least three of these second-hand, from the early 2030s.

According to an Australian Navy fact sheet, Australia must have a sovereign capacity to maintain these submarines, and the UK and the US are committed to supporting Australia to achieve this milestone before it can receive the three nuclear-powered submarines.

An ARPANSA statement said that another Controlled Industrial Facility will be a technical and engineering industrial workshop for servicing and repair of naval nuclear propulsion components and tools. It will also receive, manage, treat, decontaminate and temporarily store solid and liquid, low-level radioactive material generated from the submarines during their operations. “The low-level radioactive waste management activities are similar to those that occur in over 100 locations nationwide, including hospitals, science facilities and universities,” ARPANSA said.

“SAAC totally rejects the claim that nuclear waste from submarine maintenance is the same as hospital nuclear waste. It is bigger and lasts longer,” Murphy said.

Background: Nuclear waste from AUKUS submarines

What is “low-level radioactive waste” from hospitals?

Most of hospital radioactive waste is liquid, with lesser amount of solids and minimal gases. The solid radioactive waste is syringes, needles, cotton swabs, vials, contaminated gloves and absorbent materials, and clothing and utensils of patients administered high doses of radioisotopes like Iodine-131. The main radio-isotopes used in hospitals are Technetium-99m (Tc-99m), Iodine-131 (I-131), Iodine-125 (I-125), Iodine-123 (I-123), Flourine-18 (F-18), and Tritium (H-3). These isotopes have a half-life ranging from 1 hour 50 minutes for Flourine-18, to 6 hours for Techtenium-99m, to 8 days for Iodine-131, 5.27 years for Cobolt-60 and 12.33 years for Tritium. After 10 half-lives, the radiation danger is gone. But that means that some low-level hospital waste has to be stored safely for between 53 years and 124 years.

How does this compare to low-level and intermediate-level radioactive waste from a nuclear-powered submarine?

Naval nuclear reactors operate with water coolant systems at very high temperatures and pressures, producing corrosion and wear products that are deposited on the reactor core and become radioactive from exposure to neutrons. The reactor coolant carries some of these radioactive products through the piping systems where some of the radioactivity is removed by a purification system. Most of the remaining radionuclides transported from the reactor core deposit in the piping systems and they are mainly Cobalt-60, which emits gamma and beta rays. Its half-life is 5.3 years. Workers are exposed to this radiation when they carry out inspection, maintenance, and repair inside the reactor compartment, as they will at HMAS Stirling. Radioactive pipes are not the same as syringes, vials and discarded gloves and wipes from hospitals.

Nuclear submarine high-level waste

The nuclear fuel for the AUKUS submarines is 90 per cent uranium-235, and 10 per cent uranium-238. U-235 has a half-life of 700 million years, and U-238 has a half-life of 4.5 billion years. No government can promise to safely control this waste.

The ARPANSA licence was issued after months of protests against the Australian Naval Nuclear Power Safety Bill 2023 which would allow the federal government to declare any location in Australia as a high-level nuclear waste dump, without any consultation with First Nations peoples or anyone else. While the government stressed that its intention was to make sure that the spent fuel and radioactive reactor unit from an Australian AUKUS submarine would be stored in Australia, the Bill also allows for the US and the UK to dump high-level nuclear waste from their own AUKUS submarines in Australia. Clause 7(1) provides that an AUKUS submarine is an Australian submarine or a UK/US submarine and includes a submarine that is not complete, such as in cases where it is being constructed or disposed of. Clause 12 (d) defines a radioactive waste management facility that is for managing, storing or disposing of radioactive waste from an AUKUS submarine. With the Bill stuck in parliament, the Albanese government turned to the short-term solution of the ARPANSA licence.

First Nations peoples have successfully resisted the placement of low-level nuclear waste dumps on their lands at the Muckaty Station north of Tennant Creek in the Northern Territory and at Kimba on the Eyre Peninsula in South Australia for over 21 years. The low-level waste from the proposed nuclear-powered submarines will be initially stored at HMAS Stirling, near Fremantle, where four US and one UK nuclear submarines will be based from 2027.

The Albanese government (or a Dutton Coalition government) would face very strenuous resistance to any announcement of a high-level nuclear waste dump connected with AUKUS.

In the US, spent fuel and intermediate waste from nuclear submarines is still in temporary storage. After the Obama administration scrapped the long-debated plan to store waste underneath Yucca Mountain in Nevada, no other option has emerged. As a result, nuclear waste from their military and civilian reactors is just piling up with no long-term solution in sight. Successive US administrations have kicked the can down the road, assuring the public a permanent geological disposal site will be developed some time in the future. The Albanese Labor government is now misleading the Australian people in the same way.

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