Last month there was a march down the main street in Tennant Creek NT. More than a hundred protestors made known their opposition to the proposed nuclear waste dump at Muckaty Station, 120 km up the road.

However, local Aboriginal people are divided about who has permission to sign over the land, initially for a period of two hundred years.

Certainly, one traditional owner from the Ngapa Clan, felt strongly enough to write to the local paper that: “In return [for the facility] we will be able to build a future for our children on country with education, jobs and funds from a $12 million charitable trust”.

In 2007, the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation invited a group of traditional owners from Muckaty to inspect Australia’s only nuclear reactor at Lucas Heights, south of Sydney. The purpose of the trip was to see the type of waste that might be delivered to the site.

ABC news reported ANSTO chief of operations, Dr Ron Cameron, as saying that the waste included plastic gloves and contaminated clothing and was completely innocuous.

“I think some people want to use misinformation to try and get up a scare campaign. We want to let people know the type of waste that this really is,” he said. “I think that bringing traditional owners to Lucas Heights has really helped in that process.”

But perhaps we should get a second opinion. Let’s hear what another doctor said.

In July 2005, when Brendan Nelson was the Minister for Science, Education and Training, he painted an entirely different picture of Australia’s waste disposal obligations that start in 2011.
“The waste coming back from the United Kingdom is 26.5 cubic metres of waste in the form of vitrified solids and in concrete. We also have 6.5 cubic metres returning from France.

“The waste which comes back from the U.K. and France, much of it involves reprocessing of [power station reactor] rods. The containers that will come back from overseas will each weigh 112 tonnes.”

That’s more than some plastic gloves and a bit of hospital waste. Dr Nelson admitted in the same press conference that we currently have about 500 cubic metres of intermediate level waste around the country awaiting permanent disposal, much of it stacked in temporary drums.

The Federal government will have to build a permanent waste dump somewhere, that’s for sure. But it is the ultimate nimby quandary.

Perhaps famous last words on the nuclear debate should go to Brendan Nelson who at least says what he thinks:

“Just remember that in a built up suburb of Sydney we’ve actually got a nuclear reactor and they’re not complaining about that because they do understand the importance of it.

“And that’s far more, in terms of the radioactivity, if you want to look at it that way; that’s far more potentially of a problem for them than it might be to Territorians having this stuff stuck out in the middle of nowhere.”

Take that, Tennant Creek.