Category Archives: Actions

Update on the Australian Naval Nuclear Power Safety Bill 2023 (13 May 2024).

The Senate Committee released its report on this Bill on 13 May it contained several recommendations, including this crucial one:

Recommendation 3: The Committee recommends that the Government consider amending the Bill so that a distinction is made between Australia’s acceptance of low-level nuclear waste from AUKUS partners, but non-acceptance of high-level nuclear waste.

This new legislation on nuclear waste from AUKUS submarines will be before Parliament, possibly as early as June 2024. A Senate Inquiry process occurred earlier this year and reported on May 13, with IPAN making a submission, along with many other individuals and organisations, including the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) whose excellent submission is here ACF Submission.

The ACF have made the point that as it stands the Bill could allow US and UK nuclear submarine waste to be disposed of in Australia.

Both the USA and UK have large volumes of nuclear waste from six decades of nuclear submarines which they don’t know how to dispose of. This is high-level nuclear waste based on weapons grade uranium.

Allowing nuclear submarine waste from the USA and UK to be imported to and stored in Australia would also be totally against the Labor Party’s National Platform where Labor has committed to “remain strongly opposed to the importation and storage of nuclear waste that is sourced from overseas in Australia”  (p.111 Labor’s 2023 National Platform).