UN treaty hitch to AUKUS nuclear submarines project

A group of US experts has warned Joe Biden providing sub­marines powered by highly enriched uranium to Australia will undermine the UN’s nuclear non-­proliferation treaty.

Royal Navy nuclear powered submarines use weapons-grade fuel in their reactors.

A group of US experts has warned Joe Biden that providing sub­marines powered by highly enriched uranium to Australia will undermine the UN’s nuclear non-­proliferation treaty, setting a “dangerous precedent”.

The experts wrote to the US President ahead of a non-proliferation conference in New York this week, calling for Australia’s AUKUS submarines to be powered by low-enriched uranium.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will attend the conference and is expected to lead the defence of the AUKUS submarine plan.

Australia will be represented by Assistant Trade and Manufacturing Minister Tim Ayres.

The four non-proliferation experts – all former US officials – said providing Australia with naval reactors powered by highly enriched uranium “could allow other states to invoke the AUKUS example to justify their own production or acquisition of HEU fuel”.

They said verifying submarine fuel was not diverted to nuclear weapons programs “would be significantly easier” if low-enriched uranium was used.

France and China both use low-enriched fuel in their naval propulsion reactors.

The use of highly enriched uranium is integral to the trilateral AUKUS plan to provide Australia with nuclear submarine technology, as both US and UK naval reactors use the weapons-grade fuel.

The letter’s signatories included Princeton University emeritus professor and former US assistant national security director Frank von Hippel and associate professor Alan Kuperman, the co-ordinator of the Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Project at the University of Texas.

Arms Control Association executive director Darryl Kimball and George Moore, the scientist-in-residence at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, also signed the document.

The UN Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty Review Conference will examine Australia’s nuclear submarine ambitions, amid warnings by China, Indonesia and Mal­aysia that the plan risks encour­aging a regional arms race.

Australia has sought to comply with the treaty with a plan to receive sealed reactors that would not be opened throughout their 30-year life, and would be ­returned to the US or Britain for decommissioning.

A spokeswoman for Foreign Minister Penny Wong said: “Australia, and our AUKUS partners, are absolutely committed to carrying out this project in a way that meets the highest possible non-proliferation standards.”