In the coming week, a UN agency reviews a nuclear submarine deal for Australia.

The Asian Security Summit known as the Shangri-La dialogue takes place, and U.S. Secretary of State Blinken

visits new NATO member Finland. It's June 1, 2003, in time for the world next week. I'm Bob McMahon.

And I'm Carl Ann Robbins.

Carlo, let's start out by going nuclear.

And by that I mean nuclear power, of course.

Next Monday at the International Atomic Energy Agency's Board of Governors' meeting,

Director General Rafael Grossi will report on the AUcus Submarine Deal. That's the deal in which

the United States and United Kingdom help equip Australia's Navy with nuclear-powered submarines.

So why is the IAEA getting involved in reviewing and reporting on this?

So, Bob, when the AUKIS deal, and I love that term, was first announced in 2021, all of our

attention was on two things.

You know, how much it was strategic challenge would this pose to China and how much it really

infuriated the French.

As I'm sure you recall, the French were supposed to be selling diesel-powered

subs to Australia for more than $60 billion, and Washington and London cut this deal behind Paris's back,

and it took an enormous amount of groveling by the Biden team to calm Macron down, but they didn't

give them a taste of the deal, and this was going forward. What got very little attention at the time,

even, you know, I'm a nuclear nerd, were the arms control implications. We need to reinforce the

point. These are nuclear-powered submarines. They're not submarines carrying nuclear weapons. But their

nuclear reactors use weapons-grade fuel, in other words, fuel that could be used

in a nuclear weapon. The Chinese not surprisingly cried foul, claiming that the deal is a violation

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