Aukus laws will mean anywhere in Australia could be potential nuclear waste dump, critics say

Australian navy personnel look at a UK nuclear submarine docked at HMAS Stirling navy base in Perth, one of the ‘designated zones’ for nuclear activities. Photograph: Richard Wainwright/EPA

Critics of Australia’s Aukus submarine deal say the government has given itself the power to nominate any place in Australia as a potential nuclear waste dump, without proper consultation with communities and Indigenous landowners.

Australia has agreed to take sole responsibility for the management, security and storage of all nuclear waste from its fleet of proposed nuclear-powered submarines, including the spent fuel from the submarines’ reactors – high-level nuclear waste that will be radioactive for millennia once the submarines are decommissioned from the early 2050s.