Whish-Wilson, Sen Peter

Senator WHISH-WILSON: You mentioned lots of the challenges you're experiencing in the UK with disposal of nuclear waste as well as the submarines themselves. What do you do with decommissioned reactors and submarines? Do you have a plan? And how long have you been investigating this issue? Mr Deere-Jones : The UK plan really emerged as it became necessary to decommission the first class of nuclear submarines. As far as I can see, there doesn't seem to have been any pre-planning at the stage when my country opted to have nuclear powered submarines. They don't seem to have prepared for that eventuality. Well, I think that first class of boat lasted about 20 years, and then they began to be decommissioned. Some of them—and this is now going back to the 1960s—are still at a place called Rosyth in northern Scotland, on the east coast, where they're in dock. Their hulls are beginning to rot, so the hulls need maintenance. I think only one has successfully had its reactor taken out and removed. I think we've now got something like 19 or 20 of them sitting there in rows in Rosyth, decomposing away. And the plans are perpetually being updated but perpetually falling behind the new update because it's all new, and every design of boat and design of reactor seems to present a new set of concerns and issues. Think about old cars. Imagine taking an engine out of a very old car. It's fairly straightforward, but as they get more complicated it gets more difficult and you get bigger engines with more and more bits attached to them stuffed into a similar size body. So, with the complexities of removing these things it becomes more and more confusing. The manpower costs are going up, because national wages are increasing all the time. The cost of materials for managing the process—robots and so on—to be able to do it remotely is all increasing. So we are still formulating and reformulating the plans in the UK, and so far every time we have a government commission to review the finances and the process the government commission or auditing body comes out with the conclusion, 'Hey, we're falling behind time, we're falling behind the costs, and it's urgent and you've got to get on with it quickly before something really bad begins to happen.' That's our experience here, I'm afraid. One of the main pushes of my report to Australia was that that's got to be considered before you really engage with this process. You've got to really think about that—start budgeting ahead, with the realisation that all the costs are going to continue to rise because of material costs and manpower costs.