As Defence Minister, Richard Marles is uninspiring. He’s not across his brief. His recent statement saying Australia will not be taking US or UK nuclear waste under the AUKUS program is plainly wrong and contradicted by his own Department. Rex Patrick reports.

From 2027, Australia will start receiving low-level radioactive waste from the operation of American and British nuclear-powered submarines rotating through HMAS Stirling base in Western Australia. This is an indisputable fact outlined in fresh documents extracted from Defence using FOI.

And even though the Albanese Government has made it clear it has no appetite to take high-level radioactive waste from decommissioning US and UK subs, the legislation that has been tabled in the Parliament to regulate AUKUS nuclear waste would not prevent a future government from changing this with a simple policy shift. 

One might suggest the chances of a future Australian government agreeing to accept high level nuclear waste from US or UK submarines is about a plausible as the idea Australia might let a foreign power test nuclear weapons on our shores. History shows all sorts of things are possible when the law allows.

Welded shut

Under the AUKUS agreement, the US and UK intend to provide Australia with submarine nuclear reactors as welded nuclear power units that will not require refuelling during their lifetime.

The Australian Government has gone to painstaking levels to explain to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the international body charged with monitoring nuclear weapon non-proliferation, that removing nuclear material from these reactors is highly complex – requiring specialist equipment, facilities and workforce – and doing so would render the power unit, and the submarines, inoperable.

The Government also points out the highly enriched fuel that will be used in Royal Australian Navy subs cannot be used in nuclear weapons without further chemical processing, which would require facilities that Australia does not have and will not seek to establish.

But sealed nuclear reactors do place a waste burden on the operators, in that the sustainment of them generates low level waste and the need to ultimately dispose of the spent fuel at the end of the reactor’s life.

Taking US and UK low-level nuclear waste

Day to day operation and sustainment of a nuclear reactor creates radioactive waste in the form of disposable gloves, wipes, reactor coolant and used tools and Personal Protective Equipment.

The amount of low-level waste produced by a submarine is about the size of a small skip each year. Australia will have to take care of the low-level waste generated over the life of the AUKUS submarines.

But in documents released under FOI laws, the Defence Department has confirmed that Australia will also take low-level nuclear waste from US and UK submarines.

 

https://michaelwest.com.au/defence-minister-richard-marles-is-wrong-australia-is-taking-us-and-uk-nuclear-waste/

 

SEE ALSO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_KpqQ4cpAU

 

SEE ALSO: https://www.rt.com/russia/589141-oligarchs-world-war-3/

 

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Israel’s ongoing brutal military campaign in the Gaza Strip in response to the October 7 attack by Hamas militants has already sparked hostilities far beyond Israel’s borders.

The Ansar Allah movement (commonly known as the Houthis) in Yemen has begun attacking cargo ships passing through the Gulf of Aden that are either bound for Israel or are linked to Israeli companies.

Its move comes as the Israeli military continues to flatten the Gaza Strip in its quest to wipe out Hamas, killing thousands of Palestinian civilians in the process.

The Houthis have warned that they will stop their attacks only when Israel ends its military operation, connecting the maritime attacks to the Israeli campaign in the Gaza Strip.

While several shipping companies have already decided to steer their vessels clear of the Gulf of Aden, the United States has sent a carrier strike group into the region, with the option of strikes against Houthi targets in Yemen apparently on the table.

Even though the US military seems ready and willing to clash with the Houthis, the United States’ policy towards Ansar Allah and Yemen is not exactly clear, explained Bader Al-Saif, founding president at Al-Saif Consulting and an assistant professor at Kuwait University.

As Al-Saif pointed out, the war in Yemen between the Houthis and the Yemeni government backed by a Saudi-led coalition “actually started during the Obama administration” who at the time “supported the Saudi front.”

 

 

“And then came the Trump administration with an FTO terrorist designation for the Houthis. And then came the Biden administration that removed that designation. So it's kind of confusing where the US stands on this issue,” he explained.

 

Having suggested that a US-led naval mission is unlikely to “solve the issue at hand,” Al-Saif argued that the United States needs to “go after violent non-state actors” and to “be clear about their intentions.”

“They need to go back to the root cause that the Houthis are using, which is the Gaza war, who are claiming that their conduct is because of the Gaza war,” he added. “Everyone in the world has been calling for a ceasefire. The only two or three countries that have not include the US and Israel.”

https://sputnikglobe.com/20231218/us-military-action-against-houthis-may-expand-war-in-yemen-1115661451.html

 

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The US is exerting pressure on Saudi Arabia to delay the signing of a peace agreement with Yemen and instead join an expanded maritime protection task force to confront Yemeni attacks against Israeli-linked ships in the Red Sea.

According to a report by Lebanese daily Al-Akhbar, a draft peace deal between Sanaa and Riyadh has been finalized. It could be signed before the end of the year, potentially ending a NATO-backed war that has decimated the Arab world’s poorest country for eight years.

“Saudi Arabia is going through a difficult test between two options […] Either it will emerge from the Yemeni quagmire under a roadmap agreed upon with Sanaa, or it will submit to US dictates and join the international maritime coalition, and this means remaining vulnerable to [western] blackmail,” the Al-Akhbar report details.

https://www.theinteldrop.org/2023/12/18/us-pressures-saudi-arabia-to-postpone-peace-deal-with-yemen-and-to-back-zionist-war-crimes/

 

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WASHINGTON (Sputnik) – US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin in a statement announced the establishment of a multinational operation to secure the Red Sea amid a surge of Yemeni Houthis’ attacks on cargo ships.

“Today I am announcing the establishment of Operation Prosperity Guardian, an important new multinational security initiative under the umbrella of the Combined Maritime Forces and the leadership of its Task Force 153, which focuses on security in the Red Sea,” the statement said on Monday.

US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin in a statement said that the United Kingdom, Bahrain, Canada, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, the Seychelles, and Spain would take part in the new multinational operation to secure shipping routes in the Red Sea.

https://sputnikglobe.com/20231218/austin-announces-multinational-operation-to-secure-read-sea-amid-houthi-attacks-1115669522.html

 

WOW! WHAT A COALITION OF MULTIPLES!

 

 

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Australia has refused to send warship to support the US-led coalition in the Red Sea amid ongoing Houthi attacks on commercial vessels.

However, Canberra will send additional personnel to help the Washington-led efforts secure the international shipping route, local broadcaster Sky News Australia reported.

Earlier Washington had requested Australia to join a US-led maritime task force in the Red Sea to repel the Houthi group’s targeting of Israeli vessels.

“No, we won’t be sending a ship or a plane – that said, we will be almost tripling our contribution to the Combined Maritime Force,” Defense Minister Richard Marles told the broadcaster.

https://www.theinteldrop.org/2023/12/21/australia-withdraws-from-us-coalition-of-the-blackmailed-red-sea-force-backing-gaza-war-crimes/

 

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