Many people are shocked by the price of the AUKUS agreement. The government has budgeted a staggering $368 billion, hundreds of times the cost of a new hospital. 

But hidden in the fine print is a further huge cost. If the proposal goes ahead, we will have to manage the nuclear waste produced by the submarines. 

Nobody knows what that will cost. The US and Britain have operated nuclear submarines for more than 50 years, but still have not worked out how to manage the intractable radioactive waste.

The decommissioned boats are sitting alongside docks, with British and American scientists trying to work out what to do.

We can get some idea of the possible extra cost from the work done 10 years ago by the South Australia Nuclear Royal Commission. I was a member of the expert advisory group for that inquiry.

It commissioned a study of what it would cost to build and operate a facility to store radioactive waste from nuclear power stations in Asian countries.

It came up with a figure of $145 billion, in 2016 values. Scaled up to 2026 dollars, it is equivalent to $190 billion – half as much again as the budget for the submarines.

That figure is almost certainly an underestimate because the royal commission was considering management of waste from nuclear power stations.

The proposed submarines use highly enriched uranium,........

© The New Daily