Refuelling a French submarine is not impossible even by a nation with fairly basic nuclear capability. If we wanted less reliance on France, we could talk to the South Americans (brazil is building nuclear french designed submarines, Argentina provides fuel rods to Australias OPAL reactor). The French would have to be involved in setting that kind of capability up. We could have some sovereign capability in that space. Being LEU, commercial style capabilities are relevant. Australia has a nuclear research and medical reactor, and has continuously operated nuclear reactors for 60+ years, just in a very small, non-naval capability. But it would be expensive and slow to expand this capability with no commercial capability.
Australia moves and stores spent fuel rods, and has existing arrangements and agreements. We had to get rid of many tonnes of material from HIFAR, which was all weapons grade HEU spent fuel rods from 1950's style reactors. We had stored effectively the entire life time of fuel from that reactor before we sent it off for reprocessing. It seemed that we were quite happy to have many tonnes of spent HEU contaminated with Plutonium.
Australia already needs nuclear waste storage facility. SSNs just further expands the size of that need.
Two-tonne load to be stored at Sydney’s Lucas Heights until national facility built in several years
www.theguardian.com
Even without nuclear power and submarines in use, the nation is already producing, processing and storing radioactive waste.
www.abc.net.au
Instead of burying the waste in the desert currently we store them in the middle of the most populous city in Australia.
Personally I don't see diesel Baracuda/Sufferens ever getting back onto the table. Im not completely sure SSN Sufferens were ever on the table but more of an option of escalation to deter.
In the current context, getting the US to work with other allies is a very difficult ask. French and US relations are highly complex and ebb and flow even during peaceful periods.
AUKUS was to fall over, early on, and there was genuine questions about getting material for reactors, or the subs not getting into service quick enough. There are other options. We could try to acquire and refurbish an older UK SSN. Its possible, but much much more expensive and takes longer and are in worse material state. We could try to acquire conventional Japanese submarines or/and build those here, or base them out of Australia.
By far the most viable hedging option is Collins. Which is still going to be critical even if we do get a few SSN operating. But we have kind of lowered our expectation around operational avalibility and try to limit costs for that platform. Given the current context, I am not sure that is the way forward.
We may want to talk to the Japanese are about Submarine technologies that can be applied to Collins, particularly if we expect them to stay around longer.
We have over 100 sailors in the US SSN pipeline. Signing up for service on Collins vs signing up for service on a future Australian SSN are pretty different. From what I hear those in the US SSN pipeline feedback is very positive from both sides.