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Comment by marticode | Hacker News Reader

Australia is not a nuclear nation and as such, is normally not supposed to be able to buy nuclear devices of any sort. Which is why they initially bought French submarines that are nuclear but asked them to be retrofitted for standard propulsion.

What the US and the UK did here is a breach of a worldwide agreement by nuclear powers to not supply non nuclear ones in order to restrict nuclear proliferation. Which is one reason the French are pissed - the US took away their contract by breaking a rules the French had stuck to.

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"breach of a worldwide agreement"

I don't see anything in NPT that forbids the US and UK from supplying nuclear propulsion to Australia. They are not supplying nuclear warheads.

The reason the French are pissed are strictly commercial. But that is on Naval Group. As soon as the deal was struck between Australia and Naval Group, Naval Group were changing the terms, and were years behind on some of the earliest deliveries. Had the project been going well, Australia would not have spent political capital seeking this new deal.

It may be convenient to blame the French (isn't it always?) and indeed the deal was not going smoothly, but these are hugely political decisions and I think a key to what has happened is American pressure on Australia.

The French are not only 'pissed off' for commercial reasons. The deal was part of a long term strategy of France in the region, with India and Australia being the two main partners, so this has serious consequences for them beyond a simple arms sale.

Now, on the other hand, two good questions are whether the Australian ever discussed the possibility of France supplying nuclear-powered submarines instead of conventional ones, and whether France would have accepted. I don't know the answer to either though I'm doubtful about the latter and that may be an objective and very good reason for Australia to switch.

French nuclear deterrent is entirely developed in house, whearas the UK one is US power plant, warheads and missiles with British naval architecture. Maybe the French didn’t give them nuclear tech for security reasons, same way no-one else is allowed to buy America’s top end stuff.

The French did offer to sell Australia nuclear subs in 2016, but Australia chose not to go with that option.

The missiles are US but I was under the impression the warheads on UK tridents are UK built. No US warheads involved.

> I don't see anything in NPT that forbids the US and UK from supplying nuclear propulsion to Australia.

And yet it's a tacit agreement among nuclear nations to not sell military nuclear equipment to non-nuclear nations (ie who don't have at least a civilian program).

Which is why North Korea for ex has never been able to buy nuclear equipment from China or Russia. So far, because now that the US has decided breaking the rule for a short term financial gain was worth it, other's will decide that they might as well help their own allies too with a few reactors.

North Korea can't buy nuclear equipment from those countries because it has withdrawn from the NPT entirely, and it doesn't have a safeguards agreement with the IAEA.

North Korea's Yongbon Nuclear Reactor was supplied by the Soviet Union. Russia came very close to selling North Korea a 200 MW reactor in the early 90s but the deal fell through when North Korea refused to pay. In 1994, the United States agreed to build 2 1000 MW reactors in North Korea as part of the Agreed Framework, which was only suspended after North Korea withdrew from the NPT.

There is not nor has there ever been any prohibition on providing nuclear technology and equipment to non-nuclear weapons states. In this particular case, France offered to sell Australia nuclear submarines back in 2016 and Australia decided against it, but one of their reasons for going with the French proposal was that the submarines could be converted to nuclear in the future.

> North Korea's … Reactor was supplied by the Soviet Union.

In 2000, the Swiss company ABB signed a contract to deliver not one, but two nuclear reactors to North Korea.

Here's the bit that should drain anyone of all faith in politicians: Donald Rumsfeld was an ABB board member at the time.

[1] https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/rumsfeld-was-on-abb-board-durin...

Does this qualify as a civilian program?

https://www.ansto.gov.au/research/facilities/opal-multi-purp...

>The reason the French are pissed are strictly commercial.

No, they're not. The sub deal with Australia was just part of a broader Pacific strategy to which Australia was central. Now that Australia sent the signal that it was to be a plugin in the US foreign policy rather than a country of its own, the entire strategy is dead and needs to be reworked. It's a major setback. It coming from the Nth sabotage of the French defense industry by the US is just the cherry on the top.

Just out of curiosity why would the French even have a Pacific strategy?

We have territories in the Pacific, most notably New Caledonia (Australia's closest neighbour, I believe), and a huge EEZ [1].

[1]: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a2/Map_of_t...

reminds me of this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xykDDyHDTZY

Australia's closest neighbour is Papua New Guinea - the closest Australian island is only 4km from the PNG coast.

the French deal was absolutely crappy to begin.

Follow the money. Christopher Pyne brokered this $50Bn deal to get re-elected (some boatbuilding would happen in SA) which blew out to $90Bn and rising.

Pyne immediately retired (got his pollie-perks-for-life golden ticket stamped) and then immediately became "employed" as a consult with the people profiting massively from this twisted deal against the public interest.

Pyne followed the same slimy playbook as Andrew Robb (4) who sneakily slipped the 99-year Darwin Port dodgy deal across the line, and then he got a free $880k "job" with them the day he left parliament shortly thereafter.

Borderline treasonous behavior is rife with our political elite (both sides stink badly)

https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2016/04/would-you-employ-ch...

https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2019/07/pyne-poisons-ey/

https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2020/01/audit-office-torped...

(4) https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2018/06/chinese-sell-andrew...

What does a "nuclear nation" mean here? Note that Australia has a small (20MW) nuclear reactor at Lucas Heights. 32 countries have commercial power reactors, including the likes of Slovenia and Armenia. Are they "nuclear nations" or not?

I think the main differentiator here is operating big enough reactors that could be used to enrich practical quantities of nuclear material.

May be it's not about reactor because anyone can operate one, more about the capability of processing nuclear materials like you said

I understand France is helping Brazil build a nuclear submarine:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazilian_submarine_%C3%81lvar...

Did that get an exception? Seems strange France could get that for Brazil but not Australia.

Brazil has multiple civilian nuclear reactors in operations. Australia has no significant nuclear expertise. France would probably have preferred selling nuclear submarines because it would have saved on retrofitting cost.

I was under the impression that nuclear proliferation applies to nuclear weapons, not to nuclear power. In fact if you look at the list, most countries using civil nuclear power do not have nukes [1]. I assumed Australia was ideologically opposed to nuclear and I understand the French modified their subs to accomodate the Australians, not to not violate a proliferation treaty.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_by_country#Overv...

We already have nuclear reactor at Lucas Heights in New South Wales. It is used for science rather than power generation.

So on that note, we have nuclear technology already. Your point on proliferation does not hold.

The NPT restrictions the proliferation of nuclear explosives, not reactors - not even naval propulsion reactors.

This isn't part of the NPT - this is a tacit agreement that nuclear nations don't sell nuclear (or nuclear powered) weapons to non nuclear nations. This is why North Korea never managed to buy nuclear stuff from its Chinese ally. So far.

A submarine is not a nuclear powered weapon, or even a weapon unless they’re going to be using them to ram adversaries

There has never been such an agreement.

What there has been is the NPT's Article I prohibition on the provision of nuclear weapons or nuclear explosive devices to non-weapons-states (which are all but the 5 weapons states, USA, Russia, France, UK, China). It also prohibits assistance / inducement in developing weapons.

The "(or nuclear powered)" bit has never been a thing.

There is also the Nuclear Suppliers Group, which is a group of nuclear-technology-exporting countries that agree not to export to NPT non-weapons-states a much longer list of dual-use nuclear technologies, unless IAEA comprehensive safeguards agreements are in place. Australia is a member of the NSG, and has safeguards agreements with the IAEA.

The IAEA has been informed by all three states of this new proposal.: https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/pressreleases/iaea-on-trilat...

“Nuclear attack sub” refers to a fast attack submarine with nuclear power, not a “boomer” that carries sub launched ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads.

“Fast attack” subs hunt other subs, convoys, ships, etc. they are not strategic weapons.

dude we (Australia) literally have all the uranium .. we're the ones supplying you

There are "some" others, but Australia is place 2 (2020):

https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fu...

Just raw or do we enrich it? That might be the key

We had an enrichment program from 65 to 84, but only on a small scale. At a similar time we were also only a week or two away from having nuclear warheads.

As a nation the pivot to having nuclear weapons is quite straight forward. The technology and resources are available, and the infrastructure has been researched and applied at smaller scales in the past. We're also quite invested in hypersonic projectiles, so it wouldn't take a whole lot to arm a formidable arsenal, the highest cost being political capital.

The implications as far as non-proliferation go are potentially quite grave [1]. It might be seen as the US opening the floodgate on the export of weapon-grade uranium outside of international oversight.

[1]: https://thebulletin.org/2021/09/the-new-australia-uk-and-us-...

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