Monday, 28 May, 2007

ABC Alice Springs

One of Australia's leading nuclear physicists says Aboriginal traditional owners who have agreed for their land to be used as a national nuclear waste dump have made the right decision.

On Friday a group of Ngapa people gave the Commonwealth permission to test a pocket of Muckaty Station near Tennant Creek in the Northern Territory as a possible low and intermediate level dump site.

Professor George Dracoulis from the Australian National University was on the task force that reviewed the prospects for an Australian nuclear power industry.

He has told an APEC energy forum in Darwin that the volume of nuclear waste is small and relatively safe.

"Really it's a very benign system," he said.

"The low level waste is almost no waste in a sense that it's simply material glass, for example, for medical work that's probably not contaminated but just because of procedures you have to put it away.

"So I don't think it's an issue for either radioactivity or any other burden on society."