Friday 25 November 2005
NT News
by Eric Tlozek

A NUCLEAR waste facility in the Territory would not change people's access to lifesaving radioactive medicine, senior medical figures said yesterday.

Royal Melbourne Hospital director of respiratory medicine, Associate Professor Lou Irving, was one of three members of the Medical Association for the Prevention of War to visit the Territory this week.

Dr Irving, a visiting consultant at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Institute in Melbourne, met with NT Government advisers and community leaders to campaign against putting a nuclear waste facility in the Territory.

He said Territorians should not believe CLP Senator Nigel Scullion's argument that blocking a waste facility would stop cancer patients receiving lifesaving radiopharmaceuticals.

Dr Irving said Australia could rely on isotopes produced in Canada and South Africa for use in nuclear medicine.

He said the isotopes could be produced in a cyclotron instead of a reactor, which would eliminate the problem of storing spent fuel rods.

But Senator Scullion said the doctors did not address the issue of existing waste stored around the country.

Dr Irving, who addressed a public meeting of 50 people in Nightcliff this week, said the Federal Government wanted a facility built so it could possibly accept foreign waste.

Senator Scullion said the Government had given Territorians a guarantee against foreign waste by passing amendments banning it.

He said the facility was needed to store Australian waste that was processed overseas.