1. Introduction
2. Nuclear weapons for Australia
3. Domestic weapons production
4. Non-Proliferation Treaty
5. Peaceful Nuclear Explosives
6. Nuclear Power
7. Swords to Ploughshares?
8. References

Conventional wisdom holds that Australia has a proud record in the nuclear non-proliferation field. Just in the past five years one could note the Canberra Commission, Australia's efforts in negotiations over the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the indefinite extension of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), and strongly voiced objections from successive governments to nuclear weapons testing by France, China, India and Pakistan.

Others have questioned Australia's record. Critics of uranium mining and export point to loopholes in the international non-proliferation and safeguards regime, the centre-pieces of which are the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the safeguards operations of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Likewise the military/nuclear alliance with the US ties Australia to international nuclear politicking and proliferation.

This article addresses a less frequently discussed aspect of Australian complicity in weapons proliferation: the support in Australia during the 1950s and 60s for the manufacture or acquisition of nuclear weapons. The article then considers the shifting debates from the 1970s onwards, during which support for the production or acquisition of nuclear weapons has waned although Australia remains complicit in weapons proliferation through the US military alliance and the operations of the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation.

During the 1950s and 1960s, there were several efforts to obtain nuclear weapons from the US or the UK. The key institutions pushing for nuclear weapons were the three arms of the defence forces, the federal Cabinet's Defence Committee, the Ministry of Defence, the Ministry of Supply, and the Australian Atomic Energy Commission (AAEC). Others were more sceptical, including the Department of External Affairs, the Treasury, and Prime Minister Menzies. Menzies preferred to rely on alliances with Australia's "great and powerful friends", the US and the UK. (Australia's interest in nuclear weapons has been addressed by several authors, with the detailed research of Mary Cawte (1992) and Jim Walsh (1997) particularly valuable because they draw extensively on classified government documents which have been released thirty years after their production.)

Australia's position as an isolated outpost of British imperialism was an important driving force. At various times concerns were focussed on Japan, Russia, China, and Indonesia. As Venturini (1993) put it, "This was Menzies' Australia: a bastion of white British Imperialist Protestant Christianity - and racist to boot, the 'frightened country'."

Always there were nagging doubts as to whether the US and the UK would come to the rescue in the event of threats to Australia's sovereignty. Hence the sycophancy - the hosting of British weapons tests, the US bases, Australian troops in Vietnam, and so on. And hence the interest in nuclear weapons.

During and after World War II, Australian uranium, supplied for the weapons programs of the US and the UK, was a useful bargaining chip. It was because of this asset that Australia was included in a select group of eight nations to be involved in drawing up a statute for the IAEA. In the 1950s, uranium supply (and the hosting of weapons tests) also aided the procurement of High Flux Australian Reactor (HIFAR), a 10 megawatt research reactor, from Britain. (HIFAR, located in the Sydney suburb of Lucas Heights, is now Australia's one and only nuclear reactor.)

Uranium was no longer a scarce resource from the mid-1950s onwards. Thus Australia's uranium reserves became increasingly irrelevant as bargaining chips in efforts to obtain nuclear technology, including weapons technology, from the US or the UK.

In the mid-1950s, the Australian government asked the US if Australia was eligible to participate in nuclear sharing initiatives being discussed within NATO. Nothing came of the governments approaches except some vague promises to consider Australia if the US chose to develop a weapons capability among allied nations.

A nuclear cooperation agreement was signed between Australia and the US in 1956, but it counted for little in terms of technology transfer and probably nothing in terms of gaining greater access to nuclear technology than was available to other western countries.

The greater part of the bomb lobby's effort was directed at Britain. Beginning in 1957, the matter was often addressed by representatives of the Australian and British governments and military organisations.

The British realised that supplying nuclear weapons could cause problems, such as encouraging horizontal proliferation and perhaps jeopardising US/UK nuclear cooperation agreements. But there was support nonetheless, partly because of Australia's status as a Commonwealth country, and also because of the British government's desire to sell Australia the aircraft and missiles that would be required to deliver nuclear weapons. British documents also make it clear that if Australia was to cut a deal with either Britain or the US, it should be with Britain. Communications and negotiations continued into the early 1960s, but nothing concrete was ever agreed.

There were ongoing efforts through the 1950s and 1960s to procure nuclear-capable delivery systems. The 1963 contract to buy F-111s bombers from the US was partly motivated by the capacity to modify them to carry nuclear weapons. Moreover, their range of 2000 nautical miles made them suitable for strikes on Indonesia, which was seen to be anti-British and anti-imperialist under Sukarno's presidency.

In the 1960s the interest in nuclear weapons was spurred on by China's development of nuclear weapons, Britain's decision to withdraw troops from the Pacific, and American withdrawal from Vietnam.

From the mid-1960s to the early 1970s, there was greater interest in the domestic manufacture of nuclear weapons. It is unclear why the focus shifted from attempts to purchase weapons to a greater interest in domestic production; perhaps the main reason was that so little had been achieved through negotiations with the US and the UK.

In 1965, the AAEC and the Department of Supply were commissioned to examine all aspects of Australia's policy towards nuclear weapons and the cost of establishing a nuclear weapons program in Australia.

The AAEC began a uranium enrichment research program in 1965. For the first two years, this program was carried out in secret because of fears that public knowledge of the project would lead to allegations of intentions to build enriched uranium bombs. There were several plausible justifications for the enrichment project, such as the potential profit to be made by exporting enriched uranium. While there is no concrete evidence, it can safely be assumed that the potential to produce weapons-grade enriched uranium counted in favour of the government's decision to approve and fund the enrichment research.

Menzies retired in January 1966. The new prime minister, Harold Holt, soon faced a dilemma. The US requested that a bilateral safeguards agreement between the US and Australia be transferred to the IAEA. The Australian government opposed the move for fear it would close off the nuclear weapons option. Opposition to the safeguards transfer was sufficiently strong that some Cabinet members thought it would be preferable to close the Lucas Heights research reactor rather than comply with the request. (The previous year there were Cabinet discussions on the potential for nuclear transfers from France which would not be subject to safeguards.)

Cabinet agreed to the US request in June 1966, but only after being reassured by defence officials that IAEA safeguards would not directly affect a nuclear weapons program.

Despite the glut in the uranium market overseas, the Minister for National Development announced in 1967 that uranium companies would henceforth have to keep half of their known reserves for Australian use, and he acknowledged in public that this decision was taken because of a desire to have a domestic uranium source in case it was needed for nuclear weapons.

In May 1967 Prime Minister Holt and the Cabinet's Defence Committee commissioned another study to assess the possibility of domestic manufacture of nuclear weapons, as well as "possible arrangements with our allies."

It is not known how seriously Holt might have pursued nuclear weapons. In December 1967 he disappeared while swimming off Port Phillip Bay near Melbourne. The new prime minister was John Gorton, who was on public record as an advocate of the production or acquisition of nuclear weapons.

By the mid-1960s, the AAEC had become the leading voice on nuclear affairs, thanks in large part to its influential chairman Philip Baxter. According to Walsh (1997), "Baxter personally supported the concept of an Australian nuclear weapons capability and, perhaps more importantly, viewed the military's interest in nuclear weapons as consonant with the AAEC's need to expand its programs and budget."

The intention to leave open the nuclear weapons option was evident in the government's approach to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) from 1969-71. Gorton was determined not to sign the NPT, and he had some powerful allies such as Baxter. The Minister for National Development admitted that a sticking point was a desire not to close off the weapons option.(On the NPT saga, see Encel and McKnight (1970), Walsh (1997), Cawte (1992).)

During the election campaign of late 1969, Gorton said that in the absence of major changes, Australia would not sign the NPT. But on February 19, 1970, Gorton announced that Australia would sign, but not ratify, the treaty. He noted that the treaty would not be binding until ratified.

Why the decision to sign the NPT? Pressure from the US had an impact. In addition, there were some significant signings from countries such as Switzerland, Italy, Japan and West Germany in the months preceding Australia's decision to sign. Another possible reason was the possibility that weapons production could be pursued even as an NPT signatory. The "sign-and-pursue" option would have raised some difficulties, but it had advantages including greater access to overseas nuclear technology and less suspicion regarding Australia's intentions. The Department of External Affairs argued that it was possible for a signatory to develop nuclear technology to the brink of making a nuclear weapons without contravening the NPT.

In the late 1960s, the AAEC set up a Plowshare Committee to investigate the potential uses of peaceful nuclear explosives (PNEs) in civil engineering projects. The most advanced plan was to use five 200-kiloton explosions to create an artificial harbour at Cape Keraudren, off the coast of Western Australia, to facilitate a mining venture. The US Atomic Energy Commission was the key architect of the project.(On peaceful nuclear explosives, see Findlay (1990), Cawte (1992).)

The PNE project was abandoned after some months of negotiations. The reasons included unresolved questions about the viability and funding of both the mine and the PNE project, concern in the US because of the Australian government's refusal to sign the NPT, and the implications for the Partial Test Ban Treaty (to which Australia was a signatory).

The AAEC maintained a smaller Plowshare Committee after the Cape Keraudren project fell through. Various other possibilities were explored, but none of these plans reached fruition and the Plowshare Committee was disbanded in the early 1970s.

On several occasions through the 1950s and 1960s, nuclear advocates argued for the introduction of nuclear power. One of the arguments routinely put forward in favour of nuclear power was that it would bring Australia closer to a weapons capability. The expertise gained from a nuclear power program could be put to use in a weapons program, and the plutonium produced in a power reactor could be separated and used in weapons.(On the proposals for nuclear power, and the weapons connection, see Walsh (1997), Cawte (1992), Stewart (1993), Henderson (1996; 1997).)

While favourably inclined to proposals for nuclear power, the government continually deferred making a decision, largely because of the immature state of the industry overseas and the abundance of fossil fuels in Australia.

In 1969, with Gorton as Prime Minister, the time was ripe. With the NPT dilemma still unresolved, Cabinet approved a plan to build a power reactor at Jervis Bay on the south coast of New South Wales. Site work began, and tenders from overseas suppliers were received and reviewed.

There is a wealth of evidence to suggest that the Jervis Bay project was motivated, in part, by a desire to bring Australia closer to a weapons capability, even though key players such as Baxter and Gorton refused to acknowledge the link at the time.

In 1969, Australia signed a secret nuclear cooperation agreement with France. The Sydney Morning Herald (June 18, 1969) reported that the agreement covered cooperation in the field of fast breeder power reactors (which produce more plutonium than they consume). The AAEC had begun preliminary research into building a plutonium separation plant by 1969, although this was never pursued.

According to Walsh (1997), "Gorton's public skepticism about the NPT, the government's plans for nuclear expansion, the peaceful nuclear explosions initiative, and France's reputation in the nuclear field led some to speculate that Australia had made a decision in favour of the bomb. That conclusion seems unwarranted, but it is fair to say that 1969 represented a peak point in efforts to pursue an indigenous nuclear weapons capability."

Gorton's position as leader of the Liberal Party was under intense pressure and he resigned in March 1971. William McMahon succeeded him. McMahon was less enthusiastic about nuclear power than his predecessor. Reasons for this included concern over the financial costs, awareness of difficulties being experienced with reactor technology in Britain and Canada, and a more cautious attitude in relations to weapons production. McMahon put the Jervis Bay project on hold for one year, and then deferred it indefinitely.

The Labor government, elected in 1972, did nothing to revive the Jervis Bay project, and it ratified the NPT in 1973.

Since the early 1970s, there has been little high-level support for the pursuit of a domestic nuclear weapons capability. There have been indications of a degree of ongoing support for the view that nuclear weapons should not be ruled out and that Australia should be able to build nuclear weapons as quickly as any neighbour that looks like doing so. This current of thought was evident in a leaked 1984 defence document called The Strategic Basis of Australian Defence Policy (Martin, 1984).

Bill Hayden, then the Foreign Minister, attempted to persuade Prime Minister Bob Hawke in 1984 that Australia should develop a "pre-nuclear weapons capability" which would involve an upgrade of Australia's modest nuclear infrastructure. (Hayden, 1996.) His efforts fell on deaf ears. Moreover the AAEC's uranium enrichment research, by then the major project at Lucas Heights, was terminated by government direction in the mid-1980s.

Political and military elites have doubted whether the pursuit of nuclear weapons justified the risk of sparking a regional nuclear arms race, undermining international non-proliferation initiatives such as the NPT, or threatening the alliance with the US.

Perceptions regarding national security partly explain the declining interest in nuclear weapons. The increasingly common view that nuclear weapons are of no great use in military conflict must have had some impact. (Previously, tactical nuclear weapons were thought of as high-end conventional weapons and their use in warfare was envisaged by Australian political and military leaders.)

Through the 1950s, the military alliance between the US and Australia amounted to little more than a minimal formal agreement as expressed in the ANZUS Treaty. In the 1960s it became an open-ended commitment to (non-nuclear) military cooperation with the US including weapons development and purchase, joint exercises, and involvement in the Vietnam War. By the 1970s the construction of a number of US installations in Australia had tied Australians the nuclear arms race. Agreements were signed in the 1960s for three major bases at North West Cape, Pine Gap, and Nurrungar. These bases became operational in the late-1960s and early-1970s. (Smith, 1982.)

The development of the US alliance, and in particular the construction of the major bases, is arguably one of the stronger explanations for the declining interest in a domestic weapons capability from the early 1970s.

According to Jim Walsh (1997), who has written one of the most thorough and useful accounts of the historical interest in weapons acquisition or manufacture in Australia, the rejection of nuclear weapons from the 1970s is one of the "untold successes of the nuclear age".

Walsh is far too generous. By virtue of the US alliance, Australia is a nuclear weapons state by proxy. As Ron Gray from the Australian Peace Committee put it in a letter to The Australian (May 15, 1998) after the Indian weapons tests in 1998: "The Federal Government can, of course, adopt a "holier than thou" attitude over the Indian Government's decision, as we have signed the NPT and are not considering developing nuclear weapons. We don't need to, however, as by hosting the United States bases in Australia we shelter under the US nuclear umbrella and, indeed, are part of the US nuclear war fighting machine. Hooray for hypocrisy."

The intransigence of the US and other nuclear weapons states is a fundamental barrier to global efforts aimed at nuclear disarmament. The International Physicians for Nuclear War (1997) argue that, "By remaining steadfast in their commitment to nuclear weapons as an integral part of their defence policies, the nuclear weapons states are sending the message to the non-nuclear states that nuclear weapons are legitimate, indeed necessary and desirable instruments of military power. Combined with a lack of adequate safeguards for fissile materials, and the increasing spread of the knowledge and technology needed to make nuclear weapons, the threat of nuclear proliferation is real and imminent."

As always, the Lucas Heights nuclear agency is complicit in Australia's contribution to weapons proliferation. As plans for nuclear power and weapons waned in the 1970s, the AAEC focussed on medical and scientific projects. Reflecting its new - and more humble - status as a public sector science agency, it was renamed the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) in 1987.

Since the mid-1970s, the AAEC/ANSTO has attempted to persuade successive governments to fund and approve a new research reactor to replace HIFAR. The issue has become all the more pressing as HIFAR has reached a stage where it cannot operate for many more years without a major refurbishment.

The push for a new reactor - which culminated in the government's 1997 announcement to replace HIFAR with a new reactor at Lucas Heights - has been publicly justified with emotive rhetoric about "saving lives" with medical isotopes and with claims that a new reactor will be used for "world class" scientific research.

The medical and scientific justifications for the reactor are weak, to say the least. (Green, 1997; 1997B; 1998.) Assuming the federal government knows this, why then has it agreed to fund a reactor with an initial outlay of $286 million? Why invite the political backlash from a decision to build a new nuclear reactor in the Sydney suburb of Lucas Heights? Why build a new reactor when no long-term solution exists for the radioactive waste stockpile from the existing reactor?

The Department of Foreign Affairs and the Australian Safeguards Office (1998) state that the operation of a research reactor "first and foremost" serves "national interest requirements".

(The only detailed, objective analyses of the "national interest" aspects of the Lucas Heights reactor are those of Jean McSorley (1998; 1999). One of McSorley's detailed paper's can be found by clicking here: <www.sea-us.org.au/no2reactor/nationalinterest.html>. ABC Radio National 29.3.98 "Background Briefing" program had some interesting quotes from an unnamed federal government bureaucrat, from Jean McSorley, and from academic Andrew Mack on the "national interest debate": <www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/bbing/bb980329.htm>.)

The government is extremely keen to maintain Australia's seat on the Board of Governors of the IAEA. A foreign affairs bureaucrat said in 1993,  "(Australia's) role on the Board of Governors is central to our ability to influence the direction of control within the nuclear industry and the control of nuclear weapons. It is the only body in the world which looks at those issues on a week to week basis and that is fundamental." (Cousins, 1993.)

The government claims that operating a nuclear research reactor is necessary to shore up the IAEA position. That claim is open for debate, and in any case the position is not put to good use. As nuclear campaigner and researcher Jean McSorley (1996) argues, "It would not be a bad thing if Australia were in there pushing for stricter safeguards, a separation of promotion and watch-dog activities and stringent safety laws. If Australia did that it would, more than likely, lose its Board of Governors seat. So, Australia has to be part of the promotional stakes to keep within the upper echelons of the IAEA."

Claims that Australia uses its influence to good effect are disingenuous. Events such as the indefinite extension of the NPT, negotiated in 1995, are falsely portrayed as non-proliferation victories. As the Malaysian delegation said at the closing session of the NPT review conference, "Indefinite extension is a carte blanche for the nuclear weapons states and does not serve as an incentive to nuclear disarmament ... we are abandoning an historic moment to free ourselves from nuclear blackmail and to safeguard future generations."

To secure Australia's place on the IAEA, Australia must promote nuclear technologies. Unfortunately, most nuclear technologies are "dual use" technologies with both civil and military applications. As IAEA employees Elbaradei and Rames (1995) state, "... the materials, knowledge, and expertise required to produce nuclear weapons are often indistinguishable from those needed to generate nuclear power and conduct nuclear research."

The risk of civil programs laying the foundations for weapons proliferation is not just a hypothetical one. For example India and Israel have used research reactors (ostensibly acquired for peaceful purposes) to produce plutonium for their arsenals of nuclear weapons. Pakistan and South Africa developed nuclear weapons under cover of a nuclear power program.(Whether clandestine weapons production is best pursued under cover of a nuclear power program or a nuclear research program is a debate taken up by Fainberg (1983) and Holdren (1983; 1983B).)

Another of the government's "national interest" objectives is to shore up the US alliance. These issues have been neatly summarised by Jean McSorley (1999): "Is it that Australia is determined to keep its regional seat on the IAEA because it is part of the 'deal' that Australia plays a leading role in the (Asia Pacific) region's nuclear industry and, in lieu of having nuclear weapons, continues to be covered by the US nuclear umbrella? Taking part in 'overseeing' the activities of other nuclear programmes must meet an objective of the wider security alliance by playing an intelligence-gathering role - a role which the US probably finds it very useful for Australia to play. The pay-back for this is through its defence agreements with the US, that Australia gets to be a nuclear weapons state by proxy."

One final question: could the planned new reactor be part of a renewed push for Australia to produce nuclear weapons? Certainly there is no intention to pursue such a course of action in the foreseeable future. Nevertheless, there may be some high-level support for the view that Australia should maintain (and nourish) nuclear expertise which would facilitate and expedite weapons production at some stage in the future. Nuclear expertise, it can be argued, provides Australia with a "virtual capacity" to produce weapons.

A submission to the 1993 Research Reactor Review by a private individual, Gareth Watford, argued that Australia should not develop nuclear weapons in the foreseeable future, but the time may come when it would be necessary or desirable to do so and thus a civil nuclear program must be maintained. "The replacement of HIFAR", Watford argued, "is the absolute minimum that can be done through the civil nuclear industry to protect Australia's national security in the total sense, as well as in the more limited sense of defence."

The $286 million question is how much support this argument has within the political establishment and within military and nuclear institutions.

Cawte, Alice Atomic Australia: 1944-1990, Sydney: New South Wales University Press, 1992.

Cousins (Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade) Research Reactor Review - Transcript of Public Hearing, Canberra, 25 March 1993, pp.919-920.

Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and Australian Safeguards Office, Joint Submission to Senate Economics References Committee - Nuclear Reactor Inquiry, 1998.

Elbaradei, E.N. and Rames, J. 'International law and nuclear energy: Overview of the legal framework'. IAEA Bulletin, Vol.3, 1995.

Encel, S. and McKnight, Allan, 'Bombs, Power Stations, and Proliferation'. The Australian Quarterly, Vol.42(1), 1970, pp.15-26.

Fainberg, Anthony. 'The connection is dangerous', Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, May, 1983, p.60.

Findlay, Trevor. 'Nuclear Dynamite: The Peaceful Nuclear Explosions Fiasco', Sydney: Pergamon, 1990.

Green, Jim, New Reactor a Missed Opportunity. Search, Vol.28(9), 1997, pp.275-279.

Green, Jim. 'Does Australia Need a New Reactor?' Current Affairs Bulletin, Vol.74(3), 1997B, pp.13-20.

Green, Jim.  'A New Reactor for Scientific Research?' Submission to Senate Economics References Committee, Nuclear Reactor Inquiry, 1998. Available on request - email <jimgreen3@hotmail.com>.

Hayden, 'Bill Hayden: An Autobiography', Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1996, pp.422-423.

Henderson, Ian 'N-plant proposal included atomic bomb option'. The Australian, 1 January 1996.

Henderson, Ian 'Weapons a sub-plot in nuclear power plant story'. The Australian, 1 January 1997.

Holdren, John 'Nuclear power and nuclear weapons: the connection is dangerous'. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, January, 1983, pp.40-45.

Holdren, John, Response to Anthony Fainberg (1983): 'The connection is dangerous'. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, May, 1983B, pp.61-62.

International Physicians for Nuclear War, 'A new dimension to the nuclear threat', Abolition 2000 Newsletter, 1997.

McSorley, Jean, Australia's Nuclear Connections. Chain Reaction, Number 75, 1996, pp.29-31.

McSorley, Jean National Interests and Nuclear Intrigues, Submission to Senate Economics References Committee, 1998, <http://www.sea-us.org.au/no2reactor/nationalinterest.html>.

McSorley, Jean National Interest, Submission B to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Works, Proposed Replacement Nuclear Research Reactor at Lucas Heights, Sydney, 1999.

Martin, Brian, 'Proliferation at Home'. Search, No.5/6, 1984, pp.170-171.

Smith, Gary, 'From ANZUS to Nuclear Alliance'. Social Alternatives, Vol.3(1), 1982, pp.10-14.

Stewart, Cameron, 'Military sought N-bomb option'. The Australian, 1 January 1993.

Venturini, George, 'Review of Alice Cawte's Atomic Australia 1944-1990'. Chain Reaction, Vol.67, 1993, pp.44-46.

Walsh, Jim, 'Surprise Down Under: The Secret History of Australia's Nuclear Ambitions'. The Nonproliferation Review, Fall, 1997, pp.1-20.

Review of:

• Atomic Australia: 1944-1990, by Alice Cawte, Sydney: New South Wales University Press, 1992, 170 pp.

• Australia's Uranium Opportunities: How Her Scientists and Engineers Tried to Bring Her into the Nuclear Age but were Stymied by Politics, by Keith Alder, Sydney: P.M. Alder, 1996,  83 pp., $20.

How close did Australia come to building nuclear weapons in the 1950s and 1960s? By far the most interesting analysis of this issue is in Alice Cawte's Atomic Australia. Cawte takes a critical look at the whole scope of Australia's nuclear industry, but her major contribution is some detective work on the weapons issue.

Cawte draws on academic literature, newspaper reports, and a considerable volume of unpublished archival material such as Cabinet submissions from the government's Defence Committee, Ministers, and Phillip Baxter (Chairman of the Australian Atomic Energy Commission from 1953 to 1972). The archival research is particularly revealing.

What emerges from Cawte's research is this. There was sustained, high-level interest in a nuclear weapons capability through the 1950s and 1960s, though it was not seen as an urgent matter nor was their consensus on the issue. The Menzies government was not intent on developing nuclear weapons - most of the time it just wanted to keep its options open. To this end, the government was willing to support civil nuclear projects - such as nuclear power - in order to lower the barriers to nuclear weapons. There was also considerable interest in the purchase of nuclear weapons from the US or the UK, or for the stationing of American nuclear weapons in Australia.

Nuclear cowboys such as Baxter sought to drum up business for themselves by pushing for nuclear weapons - it was no coincidence that the strongest push came in the late 1960s, when the AAEC was at a loose end and its future insecure.

A second, more important driving force was ruling-class paranoia about Australia's position as an isolated outpost of British imperialism. At various times this paranoia was focused on Japan, Russia, China, and Indonesia. Always there were nagging doubts as to whether Australia's imperialist allies, the US and the UK, would come to the rescue in the event of threats to Australia's sovereignty. Hence the sycophancy - the weapons tests, the US bases, Australian troops in Vietnam, and so on. And hence the interest in the purchase or construction of nuclear weapons.

On numerous occasions through the 1950s, nuclear cowboys and politicians argued for the introduction of nuclear power. Often it was argued that one reason for building a nuclear power plant was to lower the barriers to nuclear weapons. The connection was twofold: plutonium could be separated from spent fuel from power reactors, and the expertise gained through a power program would be invaluable for a weapons program.

While generally supportive of the various proposals put forward, the government continually deferred making a decision on nuclear power, largely because of the immature state of the industry overseas and the abundance of fossil fuels in Australia.

In the 1950s, the government's Defence Committee, which included the chiefs of the armed forces, approached the US about the possibility of stationing nuclear weapons in Australia. No dice. In 1958 an informal approach was made to buy bombers and tactical nuclear weapons from the UK. Again, no dice.

The 1963 decision to buy F-111 bombers from the US was partly motivated by the capacity to modify F-111s to carry nuclear bombs if required; better still, their range of 2000 nautical miles made them suitable for strikes on Indonesia if such were needed to put an end to Sukarno's "adventurism".

In 1965, the AAEC and the Department of Supply were commissioned to examine all aspects of Australia's policy towards nuclear weapons and the cost of establishing a nuclear weapons program in Australia. The AAEC also began a centrifuge uranium enrichment program in 1965. For the first two years, this program was carried out in secret because of fears that public knowledge of the project would lead to allegations of intentions to build nuclear bombs.

There were several plausible justifications for the enrichment project, such as the potential profit to be made by exporting enriched uranium. While there is no concrete evidence, it is also possible that the weapons implications counted in favour of the government's decision to approve and fund the enrichment program. Its worth noting that South Africa covertly built highly-enriched uranium bombs using enrichment facilities, and Pakistan has almost certainly done the same.

Despite the glut in the uranium market overseas, the Minister for National Development announced in 1967 that uranium companies would henceforth have to keep half of their known reserves for Australian use, and he acknowledged in public that this decision was taken because of a desire to have a domestic uranium source in case it was needed for nuclear weapons.

The momentum continued to build in the late 1960s. (Sir Phillip) Baxter was still an influential advocate of nuclear weapons, as were some other nuclear scientists and administrators including Australia's second Nuclear Knight, Sir Ernest Titterton. The Democratic Labor Party, strongly Roman Catholic and fiercely anti-communist, advocated a nuclear weapons capability in official policy statements. Sundry other politicians argued the case for nuclear weapons. The Returned Services League advocated a weapons program, though equivocally at times, and there was some support within the military.

The intention to leave open the nuclear weapons option was evident in the government's approach to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) from 1969-71. By this time John Gorton was Prime Minister. He had openly advocated the production or acquisition of nuclear weapons in the late 1950s. Gorton was determined not to sign the NPT, and he had some powerful allies such as Baxter.

When the United Nations General Assembly met in April 1968, the Australian position was one of obfuscation and rejection of the NPT. A host of specious arguments were put forward, such as that signing the NPT would retard Australia's economic development. Back in Australia, the Minister for National Development admitted that a sticking point was a desire not to close off the weapons option.

Another episode in the late 1960s was the "peaceful" nuclear explosions fiasco. The AAEC and the government offered Australia as a guinea-pig for an American project to test massive nuclear explosions. The plan was for five 200-kiloton explosions to create an artificial harbour off the coast of Western Australia; by contrast, the Hiroshima bomb was 12-15 kilotons. Thankfully, that project was abandoned, and the AAEC's "Plowshare Committee" was disbanded soon after.

Nuclear power was back on the agenda in 1969. A plan was approved to build a power reactor at Jervis Bay on the NSW south coast. The project was abandoned in 1971, though not before considerable preliminary work had been completed and a number of tenders from overseas firms had been received and reviewed. There is a wealth of circumstantial evidence - too much to discuss here - to suggest that the Jervis Bay project was motivated, in part, by a desire to bring Australia closer to a nuclear weapons capability.

The financial costs associated with nuclear weapons were never likely to be insurmountable. Developing the technical and manufacturing expertise and facilities would have taken considerable time and effort, a significant but not prohibitive obstacle. The major barriers to nuclear weapons manufacture in Australia have been political. There were (and are) considerable doubts as to whether any advantages of acquiring nuclear weapons would outweigh negatives such as the possibility of sparking a regional nuclear arms race, or the possibility of threatening the alliance with the US.

Overall, Cawte's analysis of the weapons issue is intriguing and convincing. Cabinet documents from 1962-66, released in the five years since Cawte's book, all confirm the general thrust of her arguments.

Cawte's book has, by and large, met with deafening silence from the nuclear industry, but there have also been some attacks. One such attack is that of Keith Alder in his book Australia's Uranium Opportunities (which is mostly focused on the AAEC's enrichment project).

Alder was centrally involved in much of the AAEC's work from the mid 1950s until 1982. He claims that "...... there was never any planning or work done by the AAEC towards the development of nuclear weapons in Australia ...... (All), repeat all, of the Commission's own work was directed at all times to the peaceful uses of Atomic Energy, and those who say otherwise are remoulding history to suit their own false views and political purposes."

In actual fact, all, repeat all, of the AAEC's work lowered the barriers to nuclear weapons to a greater or lesser degree, regardless of intentions. Here is Phillip Baxter arguing the point: "Almost every action, every piece of research, technological development or industrial activity carried out in peaceful uses of atomic energy could also be looked upon as a step in the 'manufacture' of nuclear weapons. There is such a large overlap in the military and peaceful uses in these areas that they are virtually one."

Whether there was ever any research at the AAEC directly and deliberately related to weapons is an open question. If a decision was ever made to systematically pursue a weapons program - and its unlikely that there was such a decision - it would have been in the late 1960s under Gorton. For the inside information on that period, we'll have to wait a couple more years for the declassification of documents under the 30-year rule.

More generally, Alder's ranting misses the point. He ignores Baxter's arguments, repeated over the years, that projects such as nuclear power and enrichment should be pursued to lower the barriers to nuclear weapons. He ignores (or is unaware of) the overtures made by the federal government's Defence Committee to the US and UK in relation to the acquisition of nuclear weapons. He says nothing about the AAEC's Plowshare Committee and the "peaceful" nuclear explosions nonsense. He says nothing about the refusal of the government to sign the NPT in the late 1960s. He ignores the public advocacy of Gorton and several other politicians for a nuclear weapons "deterrent". And he ignores much else besides.

All that Alder can do is to assert that neither Baxter nor anyone at the AAEC supported nuclear weapons development or supported civil nuclear projects to lower the barriers to nuclear weapons. He repeatedly says that those who claim otherwise are politically-motivated, anti-nuclear dogmatists whose arguments rely on dubious sources.

Alder's perspective is one of embitterment at the failure of so many of the AAEC's nuclear projects. In short, his erudite thesis on Australia's nuclear history is that "Dogma won, over national interest."

Alder's vision is for Australia to provide the world with "total nuclear fuel cycle services including reprocessing and waste disposal", and if the ignorant, politically-motivated dogmatists have their way, Australia risks invasion from Asian countries in need of uranium. Baxter argued that last point many years ago, only to be shouted down by all and sundry.

Its a shame there's still a squabble going on over the details of Australia's nuclear history. The overall picture is clear enough and there's little to be gained by debating the finer points. What is more important is to draw the lessons out of this history. Such as the problem of nuclear junkies such as Baxter having a monopoly of expertise on nuclear matters. Baxter had an infinitely greater technical knowledge, and a good deal more political experience and clout, than the procession of government ministers he manipulated and outmanoeuvred.

A second lesson concerns the implications of drifting (sometimes intentionally, sometimes not) towards a nuclear weapons capability through the pursuit of civil nuclear projects.

Declassified documents from the Cold War era show that Australia was considered to be at real risk of a nuclear attack that could have claimed as many as 2.6 million lives.

To cope, authorities drafted an emergency evacuation plan in which key medical personnel were to be sent to country areas at the first sign of danger, where they would treat in makeshift facilities the two million Australians who were expected to be badly injured in such an event.

The risk assessment was made in 1969, when Australia's population numbered 12 million. It was kept confidential for fear that it would cause widespread alarm if the public knew that the authorities considered nuclear war a real possibility.

The report has just been declassified by the National Archives.

Until the late 1960s Australia had felt largely protected from a nuclear war by its distance from the most likely antagonists, the Soviet Union and the United States.

But two factors changed all that. First, the USSR developed long-range intercontinental ballistic missiles and thermonuclear warheads capable of reaching Australia.

Second, Australia aligned itself more closely in military terms with the United States. It sent troops to Vietnam and, most crucially, invited the US to set up bases here.

By 1969, the US naval communications base had been established at North West Cape, the joint communications monitoring facility at Pine Gap was about to become operational, and a plan to set up the Nurrungar base to monitor missile launches had been announced. Despite their strategic importance to the US, Australians were ignorant of the true nature of the bases until the early 1970s.

The report Medical Services in a National Emergency was prepared by a team of health officials for the National Medical War Planning Committee. They had been asked to draft a plan to deal with the aftermath of a national disaster including, but not limited to, war.

The team concluded that, from a medical viewpoint, the most devastating national emergency would be a nuclear attack on an Australian city. It said an emergency plan developed for a nuclear strike could be adapted as required to deal with lesser disasters.

The report set out estimates of the size of bombs likely to be used on each of Australia's cities. Sydney and Melbourne could each expect to be hit by 10-megaton bombs. Sydney was likely to suffer 933,000 dead and 726,000 injured, and Melbourne 818,000 dead and 637,000 injured.
Capital cities were regarded as the likely target areas but they were also the areas where medical services and personnel were concentrated.

To get around this, the report advocated the drafting in advance of a list of medical personnel - to be selected by a lottery system - who would be relocated to country areas, where they would "provide a nucleus of medical talent which can be used after the emergency to rebuild the profession".

The atomic bomb is deployed more often as a symbol than a weapon. No discussion of the 'dangers' of science is complete without it. But the accompanying stereotype of scientists blinkered to the consequences of their work is hardly accurate. Even before the destruction of Hiroshima, there have been scientists prepared to enter the political fray to ensure that the technology was adequately controlled.

Related recognition of these efforts came last year when the physicist Joseph Rotblat was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his involvement in the Pugwash Movement - an international organisation of scientists, established in 1957 to provide leadership on the nuclear question. This is a global issue, and Australian scientists have been as active as their overseas counterparts in addressing the threat of annihilation posed by nuclear weapons.

Three Australian-born physicists worked on the development of the atomic bomb - Mark Oliphant, Eric Burhop and Harrie Massey. Ernest Titterton, a British-born physicist who came to Australia after the war to found the ANU Department of Nuclear Physics, also played a significant role in the Manhattan Project. The experience was to affect their lives in dramatically different ways.

Mark Oliphant was sickened by the reports from Hiroshima, and immediately became an outspoken opponent of the use of nuclear weapons. He was one of the twenty-two scientists who attended the first Pugwash meeting in 1957, and helped to establish Pugwash committees in Australia.

Oliphant also acted as a scientific adviser to Australia's Foreign Minister, H.V. Evatt, at the initial meetings of the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission in 1946. The UNAEC was an attempt to head off the looming nuclear arms race by establishing some international system for the control of atomic energy, Evatt and Oliphant were accompanied by George Briggs, head of the Physics Section of the CSIR's National Standards Laboratory.

Briggs was a highly-skilled experimental physicist, whose work Oliphant described as being 'of a different order of precision than any other'. At the UNAEC, Briggs worked tirelessly in a strange and frustrating environment, bringing his dedication to precision to bear on the sloppy thinking that characterised many of the discussions. Indeed, the scientists were the only ones to make significant progress at the UNAEC meetings, preparing a summary of the technical requirements of a control system. Unfortunately it was all in vain.

Unlike Briggs and Oliphant, Eric Burhop had a life-long concern with the social impact of science, and was involved in political activities from his student days. Burhop sought to organise his scientific colleagues into effective lobby groups, becoming a leading figure in the Australian Association of Scientific Workers (in the UK), the Association of Scientific Workers and the World Federation of Scientific Workers. Between 1945 and 1954 he addressed more than 500 meetings on the nuclear issue. Burhop's efforts to organise an international conference of scientists for the WFSW led ultimately to the first Pugwash meeting, and he worked with Joseph Rotblat on the organising committee.

In the climate of fear generated by the Cold War, these scientists paid a price for their activities. Burhop was unable to find employment in Australia as a result of his political views, and spent the rest of his scientific career in the UK. Oliphant was refused a visa to travel to the USA, having been smeared as a communist sympathiser. Even George Briggs found himself called before the Royal Commission on Espionage, established after the defection of Vladimir Petrov, to investigate the activities of Soviet spies in Australia.

The relationship between science and politics is an uneasy one. One can easily sympathise with George Briggs who became increasingly frustrated with the dominance of power politics at the UNAEC. He wrote to his wife that the time was coming when 'a physicist would be best out of it'. But science and politics cannot be separated, and when leadership is required, scientists, or any of us, cannot afford to leave the job to politicians alone.

THERE are two words that describe this film ? staggering and frightening. Staggering, because it is a fantastically chilling tale of an aspect of modern Australian history and the aspirations of senior politicians and public figures that has been quite deliberately buried; frightening, because it exposes a callousness about public policy development that puts a question mark against the current debate concerning the replication of the Lucas Heights nuclear reactor.

The core to this story is the brazen attempt by successive Australian governments ? Labor and Liberal ? to fortify the country against invasion with atomic weapons.

This is not a story about Australia's bid to introduce nuclear power for peaceful purposes ? the ostensible purpose of the huge and complex public tender process in the 1960s that was supposed to lead to the construction of a nuclear power station on the shores of Botany Bay.

Nor is it another dissertation on the dangers, 50 years on, of nuclear testing programs in the Montebellos off the Western Australian coast, or at Maralinga in South Australia.

Rather it is about Australia secretly accommodating its allies both as a host for British nuclear tests and as a supplier of uranium to make US nuclear warheads in the hope that the nation would be allowed into the Cold War nuclear club.

That the former head of the Australian Atomic Energy Commission, Phillip Baxter, was an archetypal Cold War warrior who advocated a national nuclear deterrent for Australia is no secret. His advocacy of what are now called weapons of mass destruction to safeguard Australia against invasion from the North (read Indonesia) is notorious.

But what this program exposes is the extent to which Australia's leading politicians and senior public policy makers as well as the military became involved in a blatant and successful effort to hoodwink the Australian public about the objectives of our embryonic nuclear program.

Nuclear power for peaceful purposes was clearly on the policy agenda throughout the '60s and early '70s and not just at Jervis Bay in NSW, where there was a proposal to build a nuclear power station.

And it was not a debate that disappeared with the 1971 decision to abandon the Jervis Bay proposal.

In Western Australia, for instance, land was being kept in government ownership north of Perth until the late '80s as the possible site of a nuclear power station, even though the state Labor government was ardently opposed to nuclear activity of any form.

And there was talk of using nuclear explosions to blast new ports in the far north-west; an Australian version of the US Operation Plowshare.

But the public did not know that behind Jervis Bay was a sinister plot that had its genesis in Australia's confusion at the development of a new world order immediately after World War II.

What this program exposes is that the idea of Jervis Bay as a producer of power for peaceful industrial purposes was a myth.

Independent producer/director, Peter Butt, who has worked on this Film Australia project for more than two years, draws attention to the words of one of Australia's most unloved prime ministers, William McMahon, to scuttle the story that the proposed nuclear reactor was abandoned on economic grounds.

After leaving office McMahon wrote that there were other reasons, that might have prejudiced Australia's accession to the international nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

The secret is, of course, that Jervis Bay would have produced plutonium and the policy makers were urging the government to use that capacity to build our own nuclear weapons.

Normally, in a review I would not reveal the core thesis of a documentary. But this program is so shocking in what it says about the duplicity of a number of Australia's leaders and our Cold War allies that such a break is excusable.

I could quibble with the irritating use of explanatory captions; I could question the cameo appearance of Lennox Hewitt, one of the more cavalier of Canberra's '70s mandarins; I could argue with the overuse of some well-known footage of nuclear tests.

But what I can't argue with is the power of this documentary.

In the southern suburbs of Sydney, the government has just suspended work on a replacement for the Lucas Heights atomic research reactor after the discovery of 200-million-year-old geological faults under the site.

This documentary has the capacity to provide a far bigger earthquake that will disrupt commonly held views of why Australia even embarked on the Lucas Heights experiment.

Don't miss it.

As the Howard Government revs up the rhetoric about a war against Iraq and weapons of mass destruction, a new documentary reveals how Australian governments pushed for two decades to have their own nuclear weapons.

The documentary claims the proposed nuclear power station at Jervis Bay was not designed primarily to produce energy for domestic consumption, but as the centrepiece in a secret plan to fortress Australia with a nuclear arsenal.

A co-producer of the documentary, Peter Butt, said yesterday that Fortress Australia was a "story of a country fearful of its enemies and mistrustful of its allies that set out to buy, and ultimately construct, its own nuclear weapons".

He said: "With war against Iraq now likely, it's timely to confront our own sordid past, when we were once a frightened little country heading down exactly the same path, without considering the consequences."

Andrew Ross, a military analyst with the Australian Defence Studies Centre at the University of NSW, said that the notion of Fortress Australia should be put in the context of the Cold War, instability in Asia and Australia acting as part of the old British Empire. But it was true that "Australian military strategists were planning to be able to fight a nuclear war in South-East Asia in the 1960s".

The former United Nations weapons inspector Richard Butler drew another parallel: "Prime Minister Menzies had lied to Australia about the Vietnam War, but we had asked to be invited to join, just as the Howard Government is asking to be in a war against Iraq. Then Sir John Gorton, pushed by Sir Philip Baxter, Australia's Dr Strangelove, sought a nuclear option. Now the Howard Government wants to spend billions on new strike aircraft."

Sir Philip, head of the Atomic Energy Commission, predicted 30 years ago that Australia would be a lifeboat after a nuclear war around the turn of the century. Most of the northern hemisphere would be uninhabitable and Australians would have to fight off an invasion by armed refugees. He urged that "the most sophisticated and effective weapons that man could devise" be adopted.
Fortress Australia, to be screened on ABC on Thursday, draws on previously secret documents and rare film, including some bizarre footage taken in 1963 of a simulated nuclear test in North Queensland.

Wayne Reynolds, of Newcastle University, wrote last year in Australia's Bid for the Atom Bomb that Australia had hoped to secure nuclear weapons through the United States or Britain, but the big powers agreed to limit their proliferation. Dr Reynolds said "Australia's Manhattan Program" would have resulted in an Australian reactor producing weapons-grade plutonium.

The documentary reveals Baxter wanted Britain to fund a nuclear reactor close to the Mary Kathleen uranium mine, in north-west Queensland. In 1965, Menzies asked the Atomic Energy Commission to advise on the cost of producing nuclear weapons. Baxter thought 30 could be produced in a year.

In 1966, the prime minister, Harold Holt, thought Australia should be as nuclear self-sufficient as possible. In 1967, Baxter sought to restrict uranium sales to Britain so that Australia could produce its own bombs.

Gorton was sworn in as Britain was withdrawing from Asia. He refused to sign the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty in 1968 and pushed for the power station at Jervis Bay.

Dr Ross, an assistant to cabinet secretary Sir John Bunting in 1971, said: "We couldn't work out why the government wanted a power station in Jervis Bay. It didn't make sense as an energy source."

After succeeding Gorton as prime minister, Billy McMahon scrapped the station. Australia signed the treaty. By the mid-1980s, it was a leader in the nuclear disarmament campaign.

The story of how Coalition governments worked secretly to build the capacity for Australia to have its own nuclear weapons is probably the most startling in the relations between science and politics in the nation’s history.

The troubled nuclear legacy in Australia, which the current government is keen to downplay, had its roots in Britain’s determined, but ultimately futile, project to develop its independent nuclear capability.

As issues over nuclear technologies rise to the surface again over the replacement research reactor and the disposal of radioactive waste, the story is an object lesson in the perils of keeping such matters out of public scrutiny.

Fortress Australia, a dramatic documentary released last month at the Melbourne Film Festival and on ABC TV, has unravelled the influence of Philip Baxter, the powerful Chairman of the Australian Atomic Energy Commission (AAEC) from 1956-72, on three pro-nuclear Liberal Prime Ministers: Robert Menzies, Harold Holt and John Gorton.

Layers of Secrecy Peeled Back

The first clues to the existence of these plans emerged from a pioneering study of the AAEC by Ann Moyal in Search, the predecessor of Australasian Science, in September 1975 (pp.365-384). Moyal’s perceptive analysis was all the more remarkable for its prescience, given the AAEC had refused her access to its official records under the strict security provisions of the Atomic Energy Act.

Moyal wrote that in an interview with William McMahon in 1975, the then former PM said that Baxter had “pressed strenuously for the production of plutonium of weapons grade”. She recorded that the choice of fuel type for the proposed power reactor for Australia “was therefore posed as pivotal in determining the country’s free use of the plutonium output for weapons development”.

Moyal concluded her paper with observations that seem fresh in nuclear issues of today: “The history of the AAEC is an object lesson in the problems and dangers of closed government. At root it is a case study of the framing of a national nuclear policy through the influence of one powerful administrator surrounded by largely silent men… Overall there was a disdain for public accountability on the part of a major scientific establishment.”

Newcastle University historian Wayne Reynolds made the claims explicit in his 2001 book, Australia’s Bid for the Bomb. Moyal and Reynolds deliver elements of their evidence in the documentary by Film Australia producer Peter Butt.

Baxter dominated the scene while also serving as Vice-Chancellor of the NSW University of Technology (later UNSW), and after retiring from that post. Fortress Australia replays some chilling interviews from the
archives: “The only way in which we can protect ourselves, I believe, is by having not machine guns and rifles, but the most sophisticated scientific weapons that we can devise. And I put nuclear weapons in that too. And anything else which will enable one man to hold off a hundred.”

At the time, the 1950s and 1960s, the Cold War was at its height and paranoia was abroad about an imminent Armageddon following a nuclear exchange between the USA and USSR.

Anna Binnie, who is completing a thesis on the AAEC, wrote sceptically of Reynolds’ atomic conspiracy theory in Australasian Science (August 2001, pp.29-31). This brought into the story nuclear engineer, Alan Parkinson, who had worked with the AAEC from 1965-81. Parkinson has become prominent following his persistent attacks on the government over its handling of nuclear waste, which he labels “irresponsible” (AS, August 2002, p.14).

In an unpublished letter to the Editor, Parkinson corrected technical errors in Binnie’s article and added, obliquely: “Across the period 1967-1969 AAEC engineers and scientists were seconded to Britain to investigate a natural uranium fuelled, heavy water moderated, boiling light water cooled reactor which might have been built in Australia (Jervis Bay)”.

He did not disclose in this note he was one of those engineers, but when Australasian Science interviewed him last month his professional story reinforced Reynolds’ and Butt’s conclusions (see below).

Explosive Documents

Butt uncovered several revealing documents marked “Top Secret” and “AUSTEO” (Australian Eyes Only).

One memo from Baxter to the Cabinet Defence Committee, “Plutonium Production in Australia, 16th January, 1958”, gives a precise costing for extracting “military plutonium” from a power reactor of the British Calder Hall type, which used natural uranium. The cost of plutonium by-product from 120 MW of electricity was £23,500 per kg. A reactor was proposed for Mt Isa, Queensland, where large ore bodies of uranium minerals had been discovered.

Another memo headed “Nuclear Weapons for the Australian Forces, 3.9.58” followed minutes of a meeting in Canberra on 29 January 1958 between Menzies and British PM Harold Macmillan, which paved the way for the secret exchange of information from the UK nuclear program.

Acting on instructions from the Minister for Defence, Air Marshal F.R. Scherger, Chief of the Air Staff, reported in “Tactical Nuclear Weapons, 13th November 1958” that each “nuclear bomb” of “nominal yield of 15/20 kilo-tons” would cost £500,000 sterling.

A 1966 “Paper by Department of Supply and A.A.E.C.: COSTS OF A NUCLEAR EXPLOSIVES PROGRAMME” covered a civil power reactor that covertly doubled as a plutonium producer, plus weapons manufacture, R&D and testing and a diffusion plant for producing highly enriched uranium (U235 for uranium bombs) as well as “tritium, separated lithium isotopes and deuterium for a thermonuclear weapons programme”.

“A capital outlay of $100M could equip [Australia] with the capacity to produce annually sufficient plutonium for thirty nominal (20KT) weapons at a cost of $13M per annum.” The paper concluded: “It must be emphasised that no allowance has been made in the above figures for any delivery system costs”.

But plans for delivery were already well underway as, in October 1963, Menzies had ordered 24 of the highly expensive F-111 fighter-bombers from the US, precisely (but secretly) because they provided the capacity to deliver nuclear bombs. When the Australian nuclear program was cancelled a decade later, they had to be modified, again expensively, for delivering conventional explosives. Those that have not crashed are still in service.

In “Nuclear Weapons Policy; Top Secret AUSTEO” in February 1968, the AAEC confirmed: “If Australia possessed a civil nuclear power generation capability with associated facilities, it could produce the required quantities of weapons-grade plutonium at minimal cost… This would limit the cost of producing nuclear weapons virtually to the design, development and production of the weapons itself, including trials.”

Without stating the obvious, this subterfuge enabled the government and AAEC to hide what it was really doing and its true cost from the public.

The AAEC pointed out: “The cost of development of a nuclear warhead is progressively decreasing as the technology involved becomes public knowledge”.

Baxter, as the real author, played on the fear factor, underlining it for emphasis: “The ease and secrecy with which countries can now develop clandestine nuclear weapons, or clandestinely transfer or conceal existing weapons, has ensured that in future ‘total and complete disarmament’ is not a realistic policy. Nations can no longer have implicit faith in the pledged word of all other nations. Even security guarantees supported by both the USA and Soviet Russia cannot be regarded as credible and would be adopted at peril.”

According to Dr Jim Walsh, a Harvard University historian and expert in nuclear history who has verified the Australian record: “Baxter [was] a brilliant and crafty fellow”.

In describing Baxter’s style in the film, Moyal said: “It was one of the times in policy-making when secrecy was rampant... He fought like a tiger for Jervis Bay, [saying] most people know nothing about the technology; therefore the expert must be trusted.”

The date of the 23-page AAEC memo is significant. Clearly, it had been very carefully prepared by Baxter and kept under wraps for presentation to government at the most favourable time. This moment came when Gorton, the most bellicose of nuclear advocates among the succession of PMs, almost accidentally succeeded Holt after his disappearance in Port Philip Bay. As a Senator in 1957, Gorton had even espoused the need for “intercontinental missiles of our own”.

The remarkably confident AAEC memo landed on the government within days of Gorton announcing his ministry on 28 February 1968. The rush to Australia’s bomb had begun in earnest.

In October 1969 Gorton announced that the government would build a 500 MW power reactor for the AAEC on Commonwealth land at Jervis Bay. A call for tenders was issued.

Next year, before any contracts were let for construction, excavation started at the site and a high quality road was built. The initial cost was $1.25 million. Virtually no information was provided to the public. Secrecy and deception ruled as Gorton denied the project had anything to do with nuclear weapons. A huge rectangular scar is still clearly visible from the air.

Gorton’s wasteful nuclear legacy lives to this day. The fact that this went unremarked in obituaries on his recent death show how little is known about this decades-long drama in Australian history.

But, after McMahon toppled Gorton from the Prime Ministership in March 1971, the project was being quietly shelved up to when he lost office in December 1972. In her Search article, Moyal wrote that McMahon gave “minimal information about the government’s determination to retract from the nuclear program at Jervis Bay”. McMahon’s successor, Gough Whitlam, cancelled it finally a year later.

Fresh Evidence

From 1994-97, Parkinson was the Commonwealth’s overseer of the clean-up of the nuclear weapons waste that Britain left at Maralinga. He was removed after querying the government’s management and cutting of corners (AS, April 2000, pp.20-22; July 2000, p.16).

In the film Parkinson asked: “What did Australia get [from its nuclear liaison with Britain]? Hundreds of square kilometres of plutonium-contaminated land, which they still have. But no bomb. Crazy.”

Parkinson had entered the bomb story in 1965, unaware of the high-level plots behind the scenes. He had been working on designing reactors for the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) when he was recruited to do similar work for the AAEC at Lucas Heights. Two years later, he was one of a team of 25 AAEC staff seconded to UKAEA for 2 years to develop designs for an Australian reactor.

The AAEC, he says, had already been looking at the Snowy River and Mt Isa as possible sites. But, after he was seconded to Canada and then to the USA, Jervis Bay was announced in 1970 and he worked on tender assessment while in the USA.

Only after he returned late in 1970 did he “twig to the realisation that the reactor type selected - a Steam Generating Water Reactor with on-line refuelling - enabled continuous production of plutonium 239, as used in Nagasaki-type bombs. Yet, all of us engineers wanted a Pressurised Water Reactor without on-line refuelling. We were overruled.”

Parkinson says: “I then met a guy [he declines to name him] who had been brought from UKAEA specifically to design a plutonium separation plant. A modular design got on paper. Also, a team of 30 in the AAEC labs had gone further by developing gas centrifuges for enriching uranium 235.

“‘Hang on,’ I asked myself. Why do we need a plutonium separation plant that does not fit into a power program? And, once uranium enrichment exceeds 3% (for reactor fuel) it approaches weapons grade. My suspicions had become firm by September 1975.”

Reynolds brought the nuclear secret up to date in concluding the film. He believes Australians “want to have the capacity to develop our own bomb quickly, in the event that the Americans are not forthcoming… I think it’s fair to assume that that capacity is still on the books”.