The announcement of new nuclear submarines in Australia, the UK and the US: a terrible decision for the non-proliferation regime

The British nuclear submarine HMS Vanguard arrives at HM Naval Base Clyde, Faslane, Scotland after a patrol. Photo: CPOA (Phot) Tam McDonald / MOD Accessed via Wikimedia Commons. Open Government License Version 1.0.

On September 15th, US President Joe Biden, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison launched a new major strategic partnership to meet the “imperative of long-term security of peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific”. The partnership, called AUKUS, was announced along with a bombing decision: the United States and Great Britain will transfer naval nuclear propulsion technology to Australia. Such a decision is a fundamental political turnaround for the United States, which has spared no effort in the past to thwart the transfer of marine reactor technology by countries other than its partner in World War II, the United Kingdom. Even France – whose “contract of the century” to sell 12 conventional submarines to Australia was shot down by Prime Minister Morrison during the AUKUS announcement – had repeatedly been denied US marine reactor technology during the Cold War. If the AUKUS decision is not reversed in one way or another, it could have a significant impact on the non-proliferation regime.

In the 1980s, the United States prevented France and Great Britain from selling nuclear submarines to Canada. The main argument centered on the threat of nuclear proliferation associated with the Navy’s nuclear fuel cycle. In fact, the Non-Proliferation Treaty has a known loophole: non-nuclear weapon states can remove fissile material from international control for use in non-weapon military applications, particularly to fire nuclear submarine reactors. A significant amount of uranium is required to operate these reactors. In order to make them as compact as possible, most countries also operate their marine reactors with nuclear weapons-grade highly enriched uranium (HEU).

What could go wrong with tons of weapons-grade uranium from international safeguards?

The United States, Great Britain and Australia are giving themselves 18 months to work out the details of the agreement. This includes figuring out what type of submarine, reactors, and uranium fuel are needed. Questions must also be answered, including where the submarines are to be stationed, what new infrastructure is needed, how maintenance is carried out, how nuclear fuel is handled and how the crews are trained.

Australia has no civil nuclear power infrastructure beyond a 20 megawatt thermal research reactor and is facing a rough learning curve in the field of nuclear power. It will need to strengthen its nuclear safety agency to be able to conduct, review and validate safety assessments for marine reactors that are complex and difficult to operate. How long this new nuclear venture will take and how much it will cost can only be guessed at. But the canceled $ 90 billion (Australian) “contract of the century” with France for conventionally powered attack submarines will most likely feel like a cheap bargain in retrospect. Beyond these technical details, the AUKUS partnership will also have to bend backwards to meet previous international non-proliferation commitments and to prevent the new precedent set by the Australian agreement from spiraling out of control around the world.

The United States and Great Britain operate marine reactors in their submarines that are operated with 93.5 percent enriched uranium (civil power plants are typically operated with three to five percent uranium-235) in quantities sufficient for the life of their ships (33 Years for). Attack submarines). The United States and the United Kingdom have resisted domestic efforts to minimize the use of HEU and convert their marine reactors to LEU fuel. France, on the other hand, now operates LEU-fired marine reactors. The new Suffren-class submarine, from which the French conventional submarine offered to Australia comes from, even runs on fuel that is less than 6 percent enriched.

So Australia is likely to get HEU technology unless a LEU crash program is launched that could last more than a decade or, in a dramatic reversal, France is pulled into a deal – two scenarios at this point in time and at any point in time, rates remain unlikely to solve all proliferation problems. If Canberra wants to operate six to twelve nuclear submarines for about 30 years, assuming the high-enrichment route, you would need about three to six tons of HEU. It has no available or domestic uranium enrichment capacity. The material would have to come from the USA or Great Britain unless an enrichment program for military purposes starts.

One can only imagine how the drops of sweat trickle down the neck of the leadership of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna when an Australian delegation knocks on the door and brings the good news. The agency currently fighting to prevent Iran from procuring enough fissile material to build a nuclear weapon – 25 kilograms (0.025 tons) of HEU by the internationally agreed standard – needs to figure out how to get 100 to 200 times as much, without gaining access to classified information about the construction of marine reactors. It will be difficult to accomplish this feat while maintaining its credibility.

What could happen if AUKUS moves forward? France clearly feels “stabbed in the back” by its Anglo-Saxon allies and is so angry that it is holding a 240 gala. In response, the French could relax their position on not transferring marine reactor technology to Brazil to help the country build to help his first nuclear submarine. South Korea has just successfully launched a ballistic missile from a conventional submarine and recently launched the idea of ​​launching a nuclear submarine program in response to the growing nuclear threats from North Korea. Seoul could now ask the United States or other nations for a similar settlement to Australia.

In response to AUKUS ‘announcement, Russia could start a new collaboration with China on marine reactors to strengthen China’s submarine capabilities. India and Pakistan, which already have nuclear weapons, could also benefit from international transfers, possibly from France and China respectively. Iran has of course already expressed interest in enriching uranium at the HEU level in order to pursue a submarine program.

So far, it has been the US commitment to non-proliferation that has relentlessly undermined or severely curtailed this drive toward nuclear-powered submarine technology. With the new AUKUS decision, we can now count on the spread of very sensitive military nuclear technology in the coming years, with literally tons of new nuclear material with little or no international security precautions.

Domestic opposition to the nuclear submarine deal is already brewing in Australia. The Greens have announced that they will fight the deal “tooth and nail”. Meanwhile, Australian Prime Minister Morrison is struggling in the polls and could lose the next year’s elections – before the end of the 18-month review process announced by AUKUS. The nuclear submarine project could then be buried before take off, saving the international community another headache.

But if Morrison is re-elected and the program continues, it will be up to the United States to assume its responsibility as guardian of the non-proliferation regime. Poor nuclear arms control and non-proliferation decisions – such as withdrawing from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and approving the US-Indian nuclear deal – have so far been a hallmark of the US Republican Party. The internal political process that led the democratic Biden government to announce the AUKUS submarine is difficult to understand. It appears that the arms race and the search for short-term strategic advantage, just like in the old Cold War, is now non-partisan.