Thursday, 31 May, 2007

by Lindsay Murdoch
The Age

THE nomination of a site near Tennant Creek for Australia's first national radioactive waste dump is irresponsible because it lies in an earthquake zone, environmentalists have said.

The Australian Conservation Foundation's nuclear campaigner, Dave Sweeney, said it beggared belief that after a decade-long search for a dump site, "they have chosen one in a seismically active area".

The latest in a series of earthquakes shook the region on Friday, registering 2.3 on the Richter scale, only hours before the Northern Land Council, which represents indigenous groups, nominated the site, 120 kilometres north of Tennant Creek, to the Federal Government.

Earthquakes have struck every few months in the Tennant Creek area since the most intense quake measured in the Northern Territory struck the area on January 22, 1988, registering 6.8. The quake caused minor structural damage to hundreds of buildings in the town and twisted a new gas pipeline.

Federal Government-appointed experts are set to study the suitability of the 1.5-square-kilometre site on Muckaty Station after the NLC brokered a deal with the Ngapa Aboriginal owners of the land. Under the deal, the Ngapa clan will receive $12 million for giving up the land for up to 200 years.

But the deal has bitterly divided traditional owners of the 2240-square-kilometre Muckaty, which was handed back to them in 1995 after a long court battle.

Mr Sweeney said the deal was socially divisive. He also said the ACF and other environmental groups called on the Government to reject the site's nomination because it was not selected on a scientific basis.

He said there were also concerns about underground water in the sparsely populated area. Some of the waste will be stored in underground containers.

The Federal Government had previously announced that the dump would be built on one of three Defence-owned sites in the Territory after the South Australian Government scuttled plans to build it at Woomera.