Russia has warned that the new military pact between the US, the UK, and Australia threatens global nuclear non-proliferation.
The pact, known as AUKUS, is a military technology-sharing deal that is meant to counter China. Under the agreement, Australia will get access to technology to build nuclear-powered submarines, which would make Canberra the first non-nuclear armed state to have them.
“It’s a great challenge to the international non-proliferation regime,” said Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov, according to the Russian news agency Tass.
Ryabkov said Russia is “concerned” about the “partnership that will allow Australia, after 18 months of consultations and several years of attempts, to obtain nuclear-powered submarines in sufficient numbers to become one of the top five countries for this type of armaments.”
Ryabkov also said Russia is concerned over the UK’s plans to expand its nuclear arsenal that was announced earlier in the year. “We are concerned especially by the statements produced earlier in the year in London on future prospects for expansion of its nuclear capabilities,” he said.
In March, the British announced that they are increasing their nuclear stockpile for the first time since the Cold War. London will set its cap of nuclear warheads at 260, up from the current limit of 180.
The US doesn’t threaten nonproliferation, it has stomped on it incessantly for decades. We proliferate to allies and demand concessions at will, with no promises we are bound to respect. These subs run on weapons-grade fuel, btw.
I don’t think the Australians know quite what they have signed up for with this deal. Where are they going to get the nuclear engineers that would be needed to operate, let alone construct, these nuclear reactors on board these submarines? Australia has no nuclear industry. That means they have no nuclear faculty at their universities, let alone students. That means they have to get some; then, convince some undergraduate students to choose nuclear engineering as a field. There are none so far. How long, then, to graduate some nuclear engineering master’s degree students? Four years? Six years? And now long before those brand-new engineers could operate a reactor without blowing it up?
Nuclear-power countries have been training nuclear engineers for half a century or more. Australia is starting from dead zero with very probably not a single nuclear engineer in the country. Why would there be any- when they have no nuclear power stations? Why would anyone be taking nuclear engineering courses- or teaching it?
Somebody has to be able to run these nuclear power reactors on these submarines- unless the Australians propose to employ Americans to do it for the first twenty years or so.
This is where Australia is now: at the point where someone says to a student in first-year engineering, “have you considered nuclear engineering?”
Wait, they’re not even there. The university professor who might make that suggestion isn’t even employed by the University.