Aukus costs balloon with more cash and staff for submarine agency amid ongoing search for nuclear waste dump

Successive federal governments have spent three decades unsuccessfully trying to establish a nuclear waste site. In 2023, the defence minister, Richard Marles, committed to publicly outlining a process for identifying a waste site “within 12 months”. No plan, or site, has yet been identified. Marles has said a site will be identified on defence land, current or future.

The 2026-27 budget earmarks $11.9m over two years for the Australian Radioactive Waste Agency to assist “in developing advice to inform Australia’s future radioactive waste management and disposal pathways”.

Industry experts and defence analysts have raised concern that Australia’s sovereign submarine fleet may never arrive in Australia.

The government’s “optimal pathway” for Aukus has the US selling Australia three Virginia class submarines – two secondhand and one new – beginning in the early 2030s.

But, given stubbornly sclerotic rates of submarine building in the US, the Congressional Research Office has openly considered that, instead of the US selling any Virginia-class submarines to Australia, it would rotate its own US-commanded vessels through Australian ports.

For the past 15 years, US shipyards have built submarines at a rate of between 1.1 and 1.2 boats a year. The US fleet currently has only three-quarters of the submarines it needs, and would need to double its current build-rate to supply any boats to Australia at all.

But the backbone of Australia’s proposed nuclear-powered fleet is dependent upon the UK designing and delivering the first of a new class of conventionally armed, nuclear-powered submarine: the SSN Aukus.

The Royal Navy’s first Aukus submarine is slated to be complete in the “late 2030s”. Australia will build its first Aukus submarine, based on the UK design, in Adelaide.

That boat – the first of five to be built domestically – is scheduled to be in the water in the early 2040s.

But the UK’s shipbuilding industry is even more moribund, hollowed out by decades of underinvestment and neglect.

At the outbreak of the current US-Israel war with Iran, the UK had only one of its six-strong fleet of attack submarines at sea. The HMS Anson, visiting Australia, was hurriedly recalled to the northern hemisphere.

The UK must also prioritise – before it builds the first Aukus – building one further Astute class attack submarine, and four Dreadnought class nuclear ballistic submarines at its sole submarine-building yard, at Barrow-in-Furness.

Into the 2050s, Aukus is estimated to cost Australia $368bn, including about $4.6bn to be given to each of the UK and US to boost their submarine-building rates.