Marles told the ABC the location would need to be remote,in an area with geological stability,and one that the government could keep secure.
“We’re blessed with large parts of the country where that’s possible. We have made clear this will happen on Defence land,be it current or future Defence land,” he said.
The commitment to using Defence land was a key difference to the decades-long debate over a site for the National Radioactive Waste Management Facility,he said. That facility,planned for Kimba in South Australia,will permanently house low-level radioactive waste and temporarily store intermediate-level waste,which is largely generated by medicine production.
The AUKUS program assumes the government will not begin the disposal of nuclear waste generated by the submarines until the 2050s,when the reactor from the first of the boats will be due to be decommissioned.
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“We are talking about more than 30 years from now when one of the first of the reactors would need to be disposed of. We will in the course of the next year announce a process by which that site will be identified,” Marles said.
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton said Australia had a stable environment to store nuclear waste and declared the Coalition would not politicise the selection of a site.