 Good afternoon and welcome. It's my pleasure to welcome everyone back to 31 Bly Street for the first fully-fledged in-person event, I think since the pandemic. Andrea could correct me if I'm wrong, but it's a big occasion and a special one to discuss AUKUS and its implications for the nuclear non-proliferation regime. I'd also like to welcome the Honourable Malcolm Turnbull, 29th Prime Minister of Australia, who's with us today and takes a strong interest in these issues. And a warm welcome to everyone. Before I go on, let me acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which the Institute stands, the Gadigal of the Euro-Nation. I pay my respect to their elders, past and present. So, until now, naval nuclear propulsion has been the exclusive purview of countries with nuclear weapons. These countries keep their submarines in associated fissile material facilities outside of monitoring by the IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna. That has changed somewhat with the announcement of AUKUS in September last year, where Australia, alongside the US and the UK, announced a plan to acquire submarines with nuclear propulsion under the new AUKUS partnership. And it poses a number of challenges. It's been a contentious announcement for a number of reasons, but certainly the implications for the non-proliferation regime are significant as well. They present technical challenges, which all three AUKUS nations will have to size up. There are also geopolitical hurdles involved in this in relation to China and a number of other countries posing questions at the IAEA in terms of how Australia aims to maintain its reputation as a country that adheres to the non-proliferation treaty and at the same time will acquire nuclear-propelled submarines. There are loopholes, so this is not in direct contravention, but critics will argue that it undermines nevertheless the non-proliferation regime. So with me to discuss this today, I'm happy to introduce Dr. Alan Cooperman, who comes to us all the way from the United States from the University of Texas, the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs. He was previously Senior Policy Analyst for the Non-Governmental Nuclear Control Institute, a legislative director for Republican Charles Schumer in the U.S. Congress. He holds an A, B in Physical Science from Harvard University, an MA in International Relations and International Economics from Johns Hopkins University, and a PhD in Political Science from MIT. We had a little conversation before we started this event. He's an incredibly eclectic thinker, not just in the space of nuclear non-proliferation, but also on violence and genocide. He has worked on Rwanda. We have a Belgian connection, so we won't be able to talk to that side of him today, but we are very excited to welcome you in light of your work on enrichment. You are the author of a number of books, Petronium for Energy, explaining the global decline of MOCs, MOX, Nuclear Terrorism and Global Security. So he's the man to inject some new ideas into what is a very heated debate in Australia. We're very happy to welcome you here in Sydney. Without further ado, though, I will invite you to the lectern to make some introductory remarks, and then we'll have a conversation between us and open the floor to some questions. Thank you, Ellen. Thanks very much, everybody, for that kind introduction. I also want to thank the boss here, Michael Fullilove, for inviting me, and also Andrea for her logistical assistance. And I want to also give a shout out to your former Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, who really has taken the lead on highlighting some of these potential weaknesses in AUKUS and offering suggestions for how to address them. I came to Australia this week to discuss the AUKUS agreement because I am very worried, as are officials in the U.S. government whom I've talked with recently, that the implementation of the agreement could inadvertently foster the spread of nuclear weapons around the world. How? By setting a dangerous precedent that less trustworthy countries will take advantage of. The concern arises not merely because Australia would become the first country without nuclear weapons to have nuclear submarines. Rather, the main worry is the specific fuel that Australia intends to use in these submarines, namely weapons grade, highly enriched uranium, also known as HEU. This HEU that Australia wants is identical to the HEU in U.S. nuclear weapons. Identical. Australia's eight submarines would require the import of roughly four tons of HEU, which is sufficient for at least 160 nuclear weapons. To put that in perspective, it is more HEU than most nuclear weapon states have in their entire nuclear weapons arsenals. My concern is not that Australia itself would produce nuclear bombs, but that it would set a precedent for less trustworthy countries to acquire HEU, ostensibly for submarines, then divert it for nuclear weapons. And this is not merely a hypothetical concern, as Iran, for example, already says it wants HEU for a future nuclear navy. Now some claim that the risk of HEU can be mitigated if the U.S. provides the fuel in sealed reactor compartments, which Australia never would gain access to for decades. But when I met with U.S. officials this month, I asked if they would be comfortable with Iran, similarly receiving 160 bombs worth of HEU in sealed reactors. They said no, and that they are acutely worried about the AUKUS precedent. So they don't want to approve anything for Australia that the U.S. government would oppose if Iran sought the identical thing. On the other hand, they also want to defer to Australia's preferences as a close ally. The good news is that nuclear submarines do not require HEU fuel. Of the six countries that currently have nuclear navies, two of them, France and China, already use low-enriched uranium fuel, LEU, which is unsuitable for nuclear weapons. LEU fuel can be utilized in submarines two ways. The first option, which France and China employ, is a small reactor that can be refueled rapidly when the submarine comes in for routine maintenance. The second option, which the U.S. government has been developing for seven years, is a larger reactor containing enough LEU fuel to last for the life of the submarine without refueling. Just this week, the U.S. Congress approved another $20 million of funding for that development effort. Such a larger LEU reactor could fit in the next generation of submarines that the U.S. and U.K. are developing, which likely will be the basis for Australia's submarines. Although a lifetime core of LEU fuel takes up more space than its HEU counterpart, it still would take up only a tiny fraction of the submarine's total volume so it would not diminish the vessel's performance. For example, the current U.S. attack submarine is known as the Virginia class. It is 377 feet long, the size of a football pitch. But the LEU lifetime core for that reactor would be only about five feet high and eight feet wide. The size of maybe a personal hot tub. So it could easily fit. The most surprising and in some ways disappointing aspect of AUKUS is that Australia, until now, had been a leader in the global nonproliferation effort to eliminate the use of HEU, which started in the 1970s. For example, Australia was the first country to produce medical isotopes using LEU, not HEU targets, starting in the 1970s, which set an example that now all of the world's other large producers have emulated. All of the world followed Australia's example of using LEU, not HEU, for medical isotopes. Similarly, research reactors which used to use HEU fuel have converted to LEU fuel and new research reactors have been built with LEU fuel. So, for example, in Australia, the high-far reactor started with HEU and then in 2006 converted to LEU. And then when Australia built the OPAL reactor, it built it with LEU. Again, following the norm, reinforcing the norm and making a great example for the rest of the world. In 2017, the Australian government at the IAEA pledged the following, quote, to make every effort to achieve further progress with regard to minimizing and eliminating the use of highly enriched uranium in civilian applications, unquote. And it goes beyond civilian application. This global effort has also gone towards eliminating HEU in non-weapons military applications. So, for example, the U.S. Army in 2019 required that its new reactors use LEU fuel, not HEU fuel. U.S. space reactors, both for propulsion to get to outer space and also for use on the surface of a planet like the Moon or Mars, those reactors are also now required to use LEU fuel, not HEU fuel, under a 2020 presidential memorandum. And as noted, the U.S. government has been developing LEU fuel for its Navy reactors since 2016. Thanks to these past efforts by Australia and others, U.S. HEU exports, and the U.S. was the largest exporter of HEU, virtually the only exporter of HEU except for Russia, U.S. HEU exports have declined sharply from over a ton of HEU per year on average in the 1970s to nearly zero since 1993. Now, however, Australia threatens single-handedly to reverse that global trend. Let me close by saying that when I met U.S. officials earlier this month, I asked how they would react if Australia requested LEU instead of HEU submarines. They said the U.S. government would happily accommodate that request as it would alleviate their greatest nonproliferation concerns about AUKUS. At the moment, the three AUKUS countries are still in the midst of an 18-month consultation period through March of next year to determine how to implement the agreement. So it is not too late for Australia to rethink whether it really wants to undermine decades of global progress in minimizing the spread of bomb-grade uranium or instead choose a safer option that is more consistent with Australia's traditional leadership of nuclear nonproliferation. Thank you, and I look forward to our conversation. Thanks, Alan. A very impassioned intervention, and I guess my role will be to play devil's advocate without necessarily being a proliferation expert, so that will be somewhat challenging. But the first thing is just to walk us through this distinction between highly enriched uranium and LEU, lightly enriched uranium. Your argument is that HEU presents a particular concern from a nonproliferation angle because it could be used to make nuclear weapons without further modifications. Essentially that's what it boils down to, and you're also saying Australia itself may not pose or does not pose a proliferation risk, but the precedent it sets may well cause reverberations which further undermine the proliferation regime. So the first thing I wanted to ask you about is just the historical record where we've seen previous exceptions, and this is the first in the sense of nuclear-propelled submarines, but I was thinking back to, for example, the U.S.'s decision to waive sanctions on Pakistan as it pursued nuclear weapons in the 1980s. That did not seem to lead any other countries to conclude that they suddenly had a free pass to acquire nuclear weapons without consequences. So it did not necessarily weaken the nonproliferation regime. I mean, I could also bring up the 2008 U.S.-India nuclear deal which was similarly criticized as being a sort of death blow to the nonproliferation regime, but did not seem to directly cause subsequent proliferation by other states. So is that, I mean, do you agree here that these doomsday scenarios haven't necessarily played out in past cases? I think that's a bit of apples and oranges but what you're talking about is after a country already has acquired nuclear weapons, what should we do? Should we continue to punish them to try to deter other countries from going nuclear or should we bring them into the club for either reasons of nuclear safety or security or other alliance considerations? That's very different than what is at issue here, because whether we help or hinder countries from acquiring nuclear weapons in the first place. And the problem with HAU for naval propulsion is the way that IAEA inspections work, the way they work under safeguards. Safeguards are inspections for nuclear material to make sure it's not diverted for nuclear weapons. And there's an article 14 in these safeguards agreements which says that if a country says, well, this material is for a military purpose but not for nuclear weapons, which means for a nuclear submarine or aircraft carrier reactor, then we will withdraw that material from safeguards for as long as it is in the military sector. Well, what does that mean? If you have a submarine with a core of fuel that lasts for the life of the ship, that means there would be no international inspections of the bomb-grade uranium for maybe 40 years. But you could take HAU and make a bomb in a few months at any point in that process. So that's really the issue. Do we want to provide a legal pathway for countries to acquire the bomb by saying, oh yes, we either want to produce our own HAU or we want to import HAU, but it's for naval reactors, so IAEA, please stay away for 40 years while we do whatever the heck we want with this. That's the issue. Non-proliferation policy depends on hindering rather than helping countries go down the nuclear bomb path. And Australia has been a leader on that. Australia has lots and lots of uranium, lots of technology. They could have had an enrichment facility if they wanted. They could have gone to HAU. They had an HAU reactor where the fuel had been provided by the United States. They could have said we want to continue to get HAU, but instead they responsibly said HAU is too dangerous to be in commerce, to be legitimized. They said we want to switch our existing reactor from HAU to LEU, which they did in 2006. And they said for our new reactor, which also I believe started up in 2006, we're going to use LEU fuel, not HAU fuel. And then they went to the IAEA and they signed this document, which was led by Norway, saying we want the rest of the world to do this too. Australia has been a leader on saying HAU is too dangerous to be legitimized internationally. And that's why it's such a shock to see the way the AUKUS deal is being implemented, and everyone at this point is saying it's going to be HAU reactors. Again, that doesn't make me anti-AUKUS. The whole question of AUKUS and is this trilateral alliance good, a good idea for defending Australia, potentially deterring China and so forth? Are nuclear submarines an important or even an essential part of that? Different question. My focus, and I think it's a very important focus, is the implementation of this deal. And will it be implemented in a way that reduces the spread of nuclear weapons or fosters the spread of nuclear weapons? And I think Australia doing a 180 reversal and saying instead of minimizing HAU commerce, we want to maximize HAU commerce and set a precedent for the Iran's of the world to follow, I think that will foster the spread of nuclear weapons. And on your optimism that LEU stockpiles pose less of a proliferation risk, I guess the idea here is that it requires additional steps to render that into highly arranged uranium. So it's a more of a logistical challenge for aspiring nuclear weapons states. There are those like Caitlyn Talmadge, I think, who has written, well, it's not clear, I'm quoting here, that giving a green light to LEU fueled naval propulsion is really that much better in the hands of a determined proliferator. LEU reactors have to be regularly refueled, which provides a pretext for states to develop indigenous enrichment capabilities to generate the needed fuel. Once the state can produce the LEU, it's relatively straightforward to further enrich into HAU needed for a bomb. At least with the HAU naval propulsion, the reactor core is inserted and sealed for the decades-long life of the ship, providing no rationale for ongoing enrichment. So that seems to be a bit of an inversion of... So with all due respect to Caitlyn, Caitlyn went to the same PhD program as I did about a decade later. She's really not an expert on nuclear reactors or nuclear fuel cycles. She's a big proponent of Australia getting submarines, and so she is opposing anything that she thinks might come in the way of that. But her facts are wrong in this case. For example, you said that she says an LEU reactor requires refueling, not necessarily. What the U.S. government has been working on since 2016, it's been funded every single year from FY 2016 to FY 22, with the latest funding just approved this last week in the omnibus bill that Congress just passed and that President Biden will sign this week. Every single year for seven years, they funded a program to develop an LEU reactor for submarines and aircraft carriers, which for submarines would not require refueling. That is, it would have an LEU core that would last for the life of the ship, in the same way that existing U.S. submarines have HAU cores that last for the life of the ship. And the way you do that is you make slightly higher density fuel, and you make the reactor slightly bigger, perhaps double the volume, which increases the length by 1.3 or something like that. It's really not very much. So that's one option. The other option is to go the French path, which does entail refueling. But I'm sure that if Australia were to reconsider its path for nuclear submarines and says we want to do LEU rather than HAU, we have the U.S. option, we have the French option, if they were to look again at the French option, my guess is that France would take care of the refueling, not Australia. And so if that occurred, then there would be, from my perspective, no proliferation risk. Australia wouldn't have an enrichment facility. They wouldn't even have control of the LEU before it went in the reactor and after it came out of the reactor. So it's a bit of a red herring, the argument that Professor Talmadge was making. Look, here's the bottom line. There's two ways to get the material for a nuclear bomb if you're using highly enriched uranium. And one is to have your own enrichment facility, because any enrichment facility can produce highly enriched uranium. You just enrich for longer. That's one way. The other way is to have someone send you HAU. If you don't have either of those, no enrichment and no one's sending you HAU, you can't make a bomb from HAU because you can't get HAU. So the best solution, if somebody wants nuclear submarines, but you're trying to prevent proliferation, is to say, okay, use LEU and we will sell you the LEU. And when you're done with the LEU, we'll take back the LEU. That is a proliferation-resistant way for a country to acquire a nuclear submarine capability. There is no possibility with that sort of deal. There is no proliferation risk. I'll say that full stop. There is no proliferation risk. They're getting only LEU. They have no enrichment capability. They can't get HAU. They can't make a uranium bomb. That's the bottom line. We can talk about the HAU. There's a very similar argument being made about the fact that if you buy HAU from the U.S., part of its existing HAU stockpiles, Australia would need to touch this to the extent that it would ever need to be touched, which is probably never, but even if it were in a worst case scenario, that could also be done by the United States outside of Australian territory or purview. It strikes me that it's a bit of a similar rationale you could argue for LEU, HAU. Both could be handled in the same way, which is basically to outsource the acquisition of and the maintenance of these reactors. But I wanted to take you a little bit further. There's another argument for why critics, well, people have often worried about nonproliferation globally and in particular this region, which is to do with the role of the United States and the fear among U.S. allies that the conventional mutual defense alliances that the U.S. has built over many decades may no longer be, well, you know, will come under challenge and that the ambition required in D.C. to come to the assistance of its allies in East Asia, in the event of a war, perhaps with China, is withering, that that is forcing countries like South Korea from beefing up its own autonomous capabilities and that that may be the motivation, basically, in terms of other countries being quite tempted to acquire nuclear weapons programs of their own or nuclear-propelled submarines. Now, AUKUS seems to me to be a correction of that narrative insofar as it shows that the U.S. is willing to come to the assistance of its allies to considerably beef up its capabilities and that if anything, it re-injects credibility in the strength and durability of the U.S. alliance system not only with regard to Australia, but among other East Asian allies. So in that sense, it could also diminish the motivation felt by other East Asian countries towards pursuing their own autonomous either nuclear weapons program or nuclear propulsion technology to make up for the loss or perceived loss of U.S. leadership in the region. So let me briefly first address the point you started with where you said, well, if we're going to outsource the acquisition of the enriched uranium, it really doesn't matter if it's LEU or it's HEU since the recipient country, Australia, would never really be in control of that material. And where I would differ with you is by saying, OK, let's think about Iran. This is the discussion I had with U.S. officials just a couple of weeks ago. It makes a huge difference if you're exporting Iran LEU or you're exporting Iran HEU or the next country that comes along, whether it's South Korea or Japan or Turkey or Brazil or Argentina or whoever it is. So you're right. You could have this sort of system where the exporter takes back the stuff and it's never really in control of the recipient except for the fact it is in their control for 40 years and it's LEU, it's no proliferation risk, and if it's HEU, it's a huge proliferation risk. But to get to your larger point about the geostrategic context and consequences, I'm not a dove. I'm very worried about China, not just in Taiwan, not just the way it's treated Hong Kong, not just the way it's treated its national or domestic minorities, not just its coercive trade policy with regard to whether it's Australia or Lithuania or whoever it is, or Estonia or whatever. So I'm not a dove. I'm not an appeaser. I think that if I were Australia with a lot of territory and very few people and a gigantic perimeter at sea, then I would be worried and I would want to do everything I could to try to deter potential adversaries and defend, if it comes to that, the territorial sovereignty from aggressors. And then the question is how to do that. And this is a big debate that goes well beyond the purview of our event today. But there are very respected people in Australia who say that maybe we should have an autonomous capability to do that rather than having to rely on another country. And there are some who say, whatever we do, let's get that capability sooner rather than later as China has been relatively aggressive and seemingly growing so in the last few years. Under AUKUS, the best estimates are that Australia would get its first new nuclear submarine from the U.S. in about 20 years. So what happens in the intervening 20 years? That's a question. And then you raise the issue of, well, maybe this trilateral alliance would reinforce the credibility, I guess, of the U.S. extended deterrence commitment to Australia. You didn't put it in those terms, but that's an academic. That's the way I think of it. And that's possibly true, but... And then you said that that would therefore reduce the motivation of countries to acquire their own nuclear weapons. So with regard to Australia, I don't get the impression that Australia otherwise was headed towards nuclear weapons. And the AUKUS deal applies to Australia. It doesn't apply to South Korea and Japan. So one could turn your question on its head and say, oh, yes, the U.S. has now reinforced its commitment to Australia, but not to South Korea and Japan. So does that actually increase the incentives for South Korea and Japan to get nuclear weapons? Maybe. So I think, as again, these are bigger questions, but from a national security standpoint, I think Australia, if it decides to reconsider AUKUS, let's say there's, in the election, a labor government would come in to power and decides, well, let's just reconsider. What's our best naval strategy? I think that Australians need to think about what do we want to do? Do we want to defend our borders from aggressors, or do we want to go far, far from our borders in ways that potentially could provoke attacks on our country? And that's not meant to be a leading question, as in like the answer is obvious. The answer is not obvious, but it's not obvious to me that the best way for Australia to defend itself is to put nuclear subs next to China. Because if I were China, I would view that as Australia threatening my national security. And that would, if I were China, I would put the bull's eye on Australia. And I think Australians really need to think about that if they ever reconsider AUKUS. Again, I'm not against AUKUS. That's not my focus. My focus is on how AUKUS is implemented. But if there's a reconsideration of this geostrategic issues you're talking about, then I think that the whole thing needs to be thought through with a open debate. This AUKUS deal was announced out of the blue. Nobody saw it. I didn't know it was coming. I don't know anyone who knew it was coming. And therefore, there wasn't an open debate about whether it's a good idea. All we're doing now is debating how to implement it. Maybe we should go back and think about, was this a good idea in the first place? But I'm going to leave that to Australians. You leave a lot to think about. The point I was making on the geopolitical risk was really more to do about the proliferation risk and the sense that countries increasingly think that U.S. alliances may not conventional or the nuclear umbrella may not be enough to defend them against the theorating strategic environment in Asia. But it's largely hypothetical as well, so it's very hard to know how these things will play out. And it's also an element of perception involved, which is doubly difficult to read. Now, getting back to the details, and it's also interesting that whether it's LEU or HEU, you could still project at long range these nuclear propelled submarines, right? So the type of fuel is not going to negate that argument. What kinds of, I mean, is it possible, for example, to operate a Virginia-class submarine on LEU fuel? Is it built for that? Could the U.S. provide that for Australia? Would that not provide or not create an additional five to ten years of delays in order to work out the technologies to retrofit something which is built for HEU to make it LEU compatible? And that's the first question, I suppose. And then the second question is what other countries? I mean, presumably we're all thinking about France here, given that their nuclear propelled submarines are LEU compatible or fueled. But does the U.K. do this? I mean, does this predispose if Australia were to consider or rule out HEU? Does that mean that there's really only one option which is working with France? Okay, so if you want to have a life of the ship core with LEU, as the U.S. currently does with HEU, then the reactor has to be bigger. So the consensus is that rather than trying to retrofit the existing class of submarines in the U.S. or the U.K., and in the U.S., the attack submarine is, as you rightly say, the current one is known as the Virginia-class, the plan has been to aim for the next generation attack submarine. That's the next submarine that the U.S. will be building. It's known as SSN in parentheses X, which means, you know, the next generation attack sub. SSN means attack sub, nuclear attack sub. And so that's been the plan. And the idea there is, well, we're redesigning the whole ship, right? So we don't have to retrofit and say, oh, how do we squeeze a bigger reactor into a compartment that only has a smaller space for an HEU reactor? We're redesigning the thing from scratch. So we can just make the reactor compartment slightly bigger to accommodate a core that is, instead of six feet across, is eight feet across. I really underscore this. The ship is as long as a football pitch. The fuel, even if it's LEU for a 30-year lifetime, would be about eight feet across. And six feet high, whatever it is, five feet high. And then you have the reactor around that. You have the shielding. But it is still a fraction of the space inside the submarine. You might have to make the submarine instead of 400 feet, make it 410 feet in order to remain buoyant with a slightly heavier mass. But you can absolutely do that. And if my guess is if Australia is going to spend $5 or $10 billion American for a sub, then it's going to want the best sub in the world. It's not going to want the last generation sub. So my guess is that Australia wants this SSNX. It wants the next. That's going to come out in the US in the 2040s. And so if Australia were to say to the US, yes, we want that next generation sub, state of the art, best in the world. But we want it with LEU as you've been researching rather than HEU. Then the question is, would that delay things? And we don't know. When the Office of Naval Reactors in the US submitted a plan to Congress in 2016, they said it would take about 10 to 15 years to develop the LEU fuel and reactor for the sub, and then another 10 or 15 years to do the whole infrastructure to produce the fuel and so forth. So that also takes you to right around 2040. Might LEU delay the first sub by a year or two? It's possible. Might it not? It's possible. But if you're waiting 20 years, it seems that a year or two isn't going to be a backbreaker in terms. Now there is the question of what do you do in the intervening 20 years. And a lot of people have been saying Australia may need to enhance its existing or buy new conventional subs. And again, I leave that to Australia. But a sub that you get in the 2040s, HEU or LEU, doesn't take care of your national security concerns for the next two decades. All right. Oh, let me just also say you said France. So the UK basically just is a subsidiary of the US program. We provide their HEU. We facilitate in the design of their reactors. So essentially they're in lockstep with us. But they are not autonomously, to my knowledge, developing an LEU reactor. But if the US develops one and decides to adopt it for the US Navy, then assuredly the UK will do so because the US will stop providing HEU to the UK. As for France, they used to use HEU fuel in their submarines and they switched to LEU. And in fact, when they did so, they also built a more powerful submarine. People say, oh, LEU is not as good as HEU. Actually, their LEU submarine today is more powerful than their old HEU submarine used to be. And what they do is rather than building a bigger reactor in the sub, they keep the reactor the same size and then they just put in new fuel every 10 years. Take out the old spent fuel, put in the new fresh fuel just like nuclear power reactors do on a regular basis. Power reactors, fuel stays in for four and a half years. French Navy reactors, the fuel stays in for 10 years. They also have a refueling hatch on their submarines. So what they do is they just pop open the hatch, take out the old fuel, put in the new fuel, close the hatch. The whole thing takes about two weeks. And that's in the course of a routine maintenance for the sub where the maintenance on the rest of the sub takes much longer than two weeks. So this does not at all extend the amount of time that the sub is off duty. It does not at all. And so that's another option. Some people like that option better because it means that you get to do this maintenance of the ship every 10 years. And if there's anything going wrong in the reactor, you'll find out about it in 10 years as opposed to waiting until something maybe goes wrong in the next couple of decades. But the U.S., as I said, is going for life of the ship. Coors France has regular refueling. And if it's L.E.U. fuel, regular refueling is not a proliferation risk with all, again, due respect to Professor Talmadge. And can you take us a little bit, a step back behind the scenes into discussions ongoing in Vienna at the IAEA? There are those that are arguing that actually with good faith and a good deal of engagement that there are possibilities even for the U.S., U.K. and Australia to strengthen the nuclear nonproliferation regime, not only just uphold it using a loophole. And it does seem as if the IAEA Director General has welcomed the move by Australia to make early representations very early in this process. And that there does seem to be a good faith effort to try to patch up whatever tensions may exist between increasing indirectly proliferation risks and upholding the nonproliferation regime. Do you see a way forward? Is there a way that Australia, U.K., U.S. might be able to do that, engaging the IAEA in that way, not just in terms of L.E.U., obviously, which is your preferred solution. But even with H.E.U., I mean, is there a way that Australia might actually be able to claim both its mantle as a protector of the NPT regime and go for national security max? So, however, this is the other main focus of the nonproliferation efforts around or concerns around AUKUS. And all three countries are working very cooperatively with each other and with the IAEA to try to figure out, because this is the first time that you've had a country without nuclear weapons that would have a nuclear-propelled submarine. And so this is the first time the IAEA is trying to figure out, how do we actually implement Article 14? And, you know, as I mentioned under this article, the IAEA does not get to do inspections while the nuclear material is in the military sector of that country. And if it's a French-style submarine, that means 10 years without inspections. If it's a US-UK-style submarine, that means maybe 35 years without inspections. And so what they're thinking is, well, is there a way to watch the enriched uranium right to the moment it's put in the sub and sealed in the sub? And then, whenever it's done, 10 years, 35 years later, to watch as the material is taken out of the sub. And so that, I think, is the main focus of their efforts. And that's all to the good. And that might be sufficient with Australia. And again, my question is, what about with a country that doesn't have great non-proliferation bona fides that you suspect does or might have a nuclear weapons ambition? Let's say it's Iran. Are you comfortable with the IAEA watching four tons of H-E-U go into their submarines and seal the submarine? And then you say, okay, see you in 35 years. I don't think so. Let me give you an example. In 1990, 1991, there was a little dust up with Saddam Hussein in Iraq, you may recall. And we first did sanctions, and then we did an air war starting January 15th, 1991. And then at the end of February, we had a four-day ground war. And as Saddam realized that the international community was turning against him, he said, hey, I have a research reactor, an old one. This is, you know, an old one provided before the H-E-U minimization norm that our reactor has H-E-U fuel. He ordered his technical people to take the H-E-U fuel rods, shear the top off the fuel rods, and try to extract the H-E-U in order to make a bomb. So that's my concern. If you create a norm that H-E-U for nuclear submarines is okay for non-nuclear weapon states, you're giving them that option to the bomb. Even if they don't enrich their own uranium, even if you sell them H-E-U reactors in a sealed submarine, they have that option of just opening it up, taking the fuel out, declatting it, extracting the uranium in whatever form it's in, turning it into metal, and if they get as much H-E-U as Australia, making 160 nuclear bombs at least. I say at least because we talk notionally about 25 kilograms of H-E-U being necessary for a bomb. In fact, you could make a bomb for much less than that simply by having a better. That assumes World War II implosion technology for the bomb. If you have modern implosion technology, you could make a bomb from 12 kilograms, 8 kilograms, maybe even 4 kilograms of H-E-U. But just to be conservative, I say Australia is getting at least 160 nuclear bombs worth of H-E-U. My concern is not that Australia is going to make a bomb, but it is creating a pathway for rogue states to make bombs. Right. So we have about 10 to 15 minutes. We could go down that track, but I wanted to open the floor to some questions first and see where that goes. We've got a first hand up by Richard McGregor there, my colleague. Richard, who looks after East Asia for us at Lowy Institute. I also saw a hand at the back, but we'll get through. Oh, thank you. We'll get through. Yeah, go ahead. Thank you. I want to go build on Hervé's question about Vienna. I think in as much as it's got any coverage here, the objections of China and Russia and Vienna have been portrayed as political. The way you talk about it, you say you portray their objections as quite legitimate. You talk about your concerns, but since you know the IAEA far better than us, what do you think they will do? What will they decide? Will they allow a further exception for these submarines? Will the IAEA? Yes. So, you know, the thing is that what Australia is aspiring to do is not illegal under the Nonproliferation Treaty. It's not illegal under existing IAEA safeguards agreements. The reason we have Article 14 is because this was foreseen, that there would one day be a country that might want to use, might want to have nuclear material in the military sector, but not for nuclear weapons. And the IAEA is supposed to monitor and inspect the peaceful use of nuclear material. So what do we do with this in-between case where it's not peaceful, but it's also not for weapons? And the decision was made, well, the IAEA has no business monitoring a military. On the other hand, we don't want to create a back door to nuclear weapons. So the compromise, and it's quite unsatisfactory, is that the IAEA will watch the material until it is declared for military purposes and then not look at it again until it is removed from military purposes and put back in the civilian sector. So it's not Australia's fault that that's the arrangement that the IAEA set up. And other countries had planned to do this. Canada had planned to do this and then decided, no, that's not really a good idea. We don't want nuclear subs. We don't need nuclear subs. And so Australia is now the test case for this provision. And so it's not a matter of will the IAEA let Australia do it. Australia can do it. The question is, what will the IAEA do to try and implement this provision and do it in a way that would be the best possible? And I think Australia is doing everything it can to help, and so is the U.S. and so is the U.K. And they'll set the best precedent they can on that, but that's not going to stop another country from going and acquiring nuclear weapons. That's the problem. And so that is, for me, it's of tertiary importance in terms of nonproliferation, not even secondary. And what's of primary importance is this question of HGU versus LEU. Gentlemen at the back. And then we'll go to the left of rooms shortly. Hi. If you could just identify who you are on your affiliation. My name is Cameron Moises. I have a master's degree from the Australian National University in national security. So I read a 2018 article a while back by Nicholas Miller and Vipin Narang in the Texas National Security View, which examined the explanatory factors for North Korea acquiring nuclear weapons. Despite all the sanctions, the threats, the lack of technical skill in the country and the regime at the political system that they have, they still manage to make progress. And recent estimates suggest that they have about 30 nuclear weapons in their arsenal. So as an expert of proliferation and in your research, do you think that there is any way to remove the prospect of nuclear proliferation in rogue states like North Korea or Iran or things like that? Thank you. That's a great question. And Herve and I were chatting about that before the event. History shows us that if a country really, really, really wants nuclear weapons and the international community is not willing to use all of its resources to prevent that. And by all of its resources, I mean not just sanctions, but if necessary, military action, what we call counter-proliferation. Then a country can acquire nuclear weapons and we can look at Pakistan or we can look at North Korea. That said, there's about 200 countries in the world and only nine of them have nuclear weapons. And six of them had nuclear weapons 50 years ago. I include Israel in that list. So that means in the last 50 years only three countries have gone nuclear. That's India, Pakistan, and North Korea. And even India went in 1974. So one could argue two countries in the last 48 years have gone nuclear. And that means that to some degree the nuclear nonproliferation regime is working. And one of the reasons it's working is that it makes it very hard for countries to get nuclear weapons. In the 1970s what the international community decided was there's two paths to a nuclear bomb. One is plutonium, which you get through reprocessing, use nuclear fuel. And the other is highly enriched uranium, which you get by enriching uranium. And the international community said we are going to restrict countries from getting reprocessing technology for plutonium bombs or enrichment technology for uranium bombs. And that policy, while it has not been perfectly implemented, it has done a great job at really raising the hurdles for countries to acquire nuclear weapons. And so my concern is that if Australia decides to go for HEU reactors, it essentially is eroding that second hurdle. And it's going to make it easier for countries to get the material for nuclear bombs. And logically that'll make it more likely that we'll get more country with nuclear bombs. So would my policy guarantee no country ever gets nuclear weapons again? No. Would my policy reduce the risks and reduce the number of countries likely to get nuclear weapons? Yes. And that used to be Australia's policy. Where was the debate in Australia where they decided we're going to go from trying to eliminate global HEU use to actually promoting global HEU use? Was there a debate in Australia where that was debated and they said, oh, that's a good idea. I don't think so. I don't think there was any such... Sorry, I got Australian Cuzzies and they taught me how to speak this way. I don't think there's ever been a debate as such a grave consequential decision, not just for Australia, but for the world. It seems to me you should have a debate about that and think especially when there's this alternative pathway that is the best of both worlds. Australia can get its nuclear submarines to ensure its security against a rising China with LEU fuel and thereby reduce nonproliferation risks, which by the way are also a risk to Australia. If other countries get nuclear bombs, it's not going to enhance Australia's security. It's going to degrade Australia's security. So that's my only point, but you raise a good point. And just for the record, Vipin Narang is also at MIT where I got my PhD. We've got a gentleman just to the front of the room here. Chris Skinner, the editor of the Nuclear Propulsion Roadmap for Australia. I take some exception to your most recent remarks here, which in some ways detract from your earlier very erudite tour de l'horizon. There has been no debate, as you say, because there isn't any need for one. Australia has not yet committed to highly enriched uranium. What we have committed to is a nuclear submarine program which has bipartisan support or credit to the opposition on condition no nuclear weapons and no nuclear industry. And the real issue is the refuelling. If the UK, the US or indeed France can provide a nuclear submarine solution that does not require mid-term refuelling, that's what we want. There's nothing in Australia's decision making thus far that we're committed to HAU. My question for you though is, do you think it's feasible that the low enriched uranium option for the SSNX or the UK equivalent called the SSNR could be earlier than 2040 because otherwise we have a gap in our submarine capability? So thanks for the question. I think you have a gap in your submarine capability anyway, you know, with all due respect. But you raise a very fair question, which is, is the gap going to be till 2040 or till 2041 or till 2042? I'm not sure that that makes an enormous difference. Again, that's for Australia to decide. They're going to have to do something to bolster their submarine capability before 2040 and that might be leasing a nuclear submarine. I don't know who's going to lease you a nuclear submarine because everyone who's got them says they need every single one. But that's an option or the other option might be extending the life of your existing submarines or buying probably better ones that are conventional to take you through the next two decades. But the gist of your question is premised by the idea that you think life of the ship cores are essential. And I'm not sure why you or others feel that way. France has operated very, very well with refueling its reactors every 10 years. But let's say for whatever reason Australia has decided we want life of the ship reactors. And your question is if Australia says to the US we want LEU, not HEU, would that delay it and buy how much? I can't give you, I can't give you an answer with certitude. And that's because this is part of a research and development project that the US has been funding and working on for seven years. And whenever you do R&D, you're not sure exactly how it's going to turn out. What I can say is that in other realms of nuclear reactors and technology, when the decision was made to go from HEU to LEU, it has worked well. Research reactors went from HEU fuel to LEU fuel. And this was retrofitting. And over 100 reactors around the world have either retrofitted or shut down. And the number of that have retrofitted is over 70. So over 70 research reactors have converted from using HEU fuel to LEU fuel. Medical isotope production. Every country that's tried it has succeeded going from HEU to LEU. The US is so confident in converting from HEU to LEU that it ordered all new Army reactors to be LEU and all new space reactors to be LEU. So I can't guarantee it. But what I can say is that the fuel design that the US Navy intends for LEU, they've also been testing it for HEU. And this is classified, but the word that you hear publicly is that that research is going quite well. So what I would say is that the Australian government has to ask that question of the US government and say, you know, we have some, you know, give it, put aside concerns. If possible, we'd prefer to do LEU rather than HEU so we could both bolster our national security and sustain our leadership on nonproliferation. Would that delay acquisition of the first sub under AUKUS? And if so, by how much? I think that's the way to address that. Thank you. All right. Well, that's all we have time for. Alan, thanks so much for coming here. You lament the fact there's a lack of debate in this country, but I'm sure you're going to add quite a bit of debate in the coming few days. So we're grateful for your intervention. We learned a lot and we look forward to see how you engage with other Australian thinkers on this question. One last very brief yes-no question. Do you think the sorts of issues you're talking about between LEU, that distinction between LEU and HEU is a first order proliferation risk on par with, for example, the fraying US-Russian strategic arms control framework or China's rapid buildup of new nuclear forces? Or is this something that is... So I think I would talk about that as the difference between vertical proliferation and horizontal proliferation. Vertical proliferation is what we think of with arms races. And so I think both with the US-Russia relationship and the US-China relationship, we're talking about arms races. How many weapons will the existing weapon states have and what type will they be? And what I'm talking about is how many countries will have nuclear weapons. And I think on that latter question, in recent history, this AUKUS implementation decision is the most consequential one that I can think of for horizontal proliferation. Not the only one, but the most, yeah. All right. Well, thank you, Alan. Thank you. Appreciate it.