IT was October 2005 at Crab Claw Island, a low-key resort near Darwin, and a large group of senior Aborigines was listening to a presentation by scientists from the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, who were talking up the need for a dump to house the nation's low-level nuclear waste.

It would be a lost cause, of course, trying to persuade people who not many years earlier were so often talked about as Stone Age, to think nuclear. Still, it didn't hurt to try.

The scientists had won permission to make a presentation to the 80 or so people who made up the Northern Land Council's full-member council. They weren't trying to persuade the group to locate a dump on Aboriginal land, but explaining what the dump - then earmarked for Defence land in the Territory, neighbouring Aboriginal land - would store.

It would be mostly medical waste. The scientists demonstrated a Geiger counter, talked of the work at the Lucas Heights reactor in Sydney and discussed the nuclear contribution to medicine. One older man stood and unbuttoned his shirt, pointing to the scars from his heart surgery.

People talked of being injected with radioactive isotopes for operations. A cancer survivor explained being saved by radiation therapy. Two female council members recounted the benefits of X-rays from the time they had worked as nurses. One man made the point that guns were good for shooting kangaroos, but bad news when pointed at people. That, he said, was the same for nuclear technology.

The scientists were taken aback by the knowledge and interest shown by this group, who would surprise the Howard government by asking if the dump could be located on Aboriginal, rather than Defence, land.

This would lead to a group of traditional owners from Muckaty station, 120km north of Tennant Creek, proposing their land for a dump no one else wanted. This has deeply confronted environmentalists, Labor politicians and their supporters, who find it hard to accept that Aborigines would embrace storing nuclear waste.

As groups try to force Labor to repeal the Howard government's legislation allowing the Northern Land Council to nominate its land for the dump, the NLC's full council, meeting this week, strongly re-endorsed its backing for the decision, suggesting Labor need look no further for sites.

The reality is that if the Ngapa group from Muckaty, known as the desert rain people, did not live in abject poverty, they probably would never have offered up their land for a fistful of dollars.

Yet it must also be remembered that Aborigines have more closely dealt with the emotion and reality of uranium and its uses than most Australians. The Ranger mine is on Aboriginal land in Kakadu, alongside the Jabiluka and Koongarra battlegrounds.

With much of the nation's nuclear waste stored in what amounts to little better than shipping containers in hospital carparks, the need for a dump is not seriously contested.

The quest to find a site began more than 30 years ago under federal Labor. Many years later, federal government scientists declared arid land near Woomera, in South Australia, the ideal location. The South Australian government objected and ran a case in the Federal Court in 2004, which the commonwealth lost.

The federal government began talking about locating a dump on an island, somewhere, to minimise public aggravation. But islands are porous, rainy places. It made no sense. The Coalition, breaking an election promise, trained its sights on the Northern Territory, which did not have the powers of a state and could not reject a dump. In 2005, then science minister Brendan Nelson announced the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Act, which specifically named three Northern Territory sites, all on Defence land.

The preferred location was central Australia, for its dryness. But two of the Defence sites neighboured Aboriginal land. The Central Land Council was strongly opposed to it and began preparing to make life difficult for the government. The NLC was far more receptive. And Muckaty, being at the southernmost reaches of the NLC's jurisdiction, was arid country.

The 2005 Crab Claw Island resolution by the full council to consider the dump left the Territory's Labor government aghast. It knew the NLC could deal directly with the Coalition and cut the Territory government out of any say in the dump. Then chief minister Clare Martin argued that she was not against the dump, but said Territorians had a right to be fully consulted.

The NLC was widely seen to be in bed with the Coalition, unprecedented for an organisation that had always been expected to fall in line behind Labor policy. There was talk of bribes, long lunches and coercion.

The Howard government, for so long disconnected from indigenous Australia, was delighted that Aborigines were interested.

It passed an amendment to the act allowing for a land council, orthe Territory's chief minister, to nominate land for the waste facility.

Muckaty station had been converted to Aboriginal land in the mid-90s. A settlement condition was that Aborigines accepted passage of the north-south rail, and a future gas pipeline. These Aborigines were accustomed to big ideas infiltrating their lands.

Traditional owners were taken on tours to Lucas Heights. Things started getting real when scientists and traditional owners drove east and west along an existing mine haulage road through Muckaty, examining possible sites. Most of Muckaty was owned by the Ngapa group, though others, such as the Ngarrka land owners, had interests.

The Ngarrka land owners weren't fully on board; the Ngapa group was. A high rocky point on Ngapa land was identified. Any agreement required the Ngapa to fully surrender their land to the commonwealth, but the Ngapa demanded what seems almost a quaint condition - that the land be handed back in 300 years. The Howard government agreed.

By April last year, the Ngapa group, made up of 40 to 50 core members, unanimously voted to nominate their land for the dump.

Bitter divisions broke out as members of the Ngarrka group, and other Aborigines in the area, protested against what they saw as the Ngapa's unilateral decision.

The Ngapa nomination was endorsed at an NLC full council meeting in May last year. Julie Bishop, then science minister, was provided with detailed anthropological information that showed the Ngapa were the rightful owners. She accepted the nomination, despite the protests of other groups. A deal was struck whereby the Ngapa would be paid what seems a modest $12 million - based on freehold land prices in the area - for the use of 225ha. Of that, $11 million would be cash, to be held in trust; the other $1million was for education and scholarships.

Federal Labor opposition members - Warren Snowdon, Trish Crossin and Peter Garrett - were appalled, and campaigned that any site had to be nominated in broad consultation. They vowed to repeal the Howard government's Waste Management Act.

The Greens tried to keep Labor to its word by introducing a repealing bill earlier this year, but Labor declined to join them. The act stands.

Labor needs a dump built by 2011-15 in order to accept spent fuel to be repatriated from France. That waste could conceivably be kept, like Australia's other low-level waste, in makeshift storage, but Resources and Energy Minister Martin Ferguson doesn't think that's good enough.

He has in recent days expressed frustration, saying states and territories need to face up to the fact that the dump is going to be built, somewhere.

The NLC was in another full council meeting last week. On Wednesday, recently elected NLC chairman Wali Wunungmurra emerged with a statement repeating that the full council strongly endorsed the Ngapa group's wishes and saying that "all Australians can continue to receive benefits such as medical treatment from nuclear medicine".

Many still believe a dirty fix is in. But by endorsing the Ngapa group's wishes, Wunungmurra decisively canned the talk that the dump was a special deal between the old NLC and the old government. Crossin was in Tennant Creek on Thursday morning meeting anti-dump Aborigines, but was unable to explain to them why Labor had not repealed the Waste Management Act, as promised. That might be because Labor has yet to fully explain the terms of that promise. Their own fine print says it will be repealed "subject to existing contracts". And the Ngapa group has a contract.

Labor could always just go back to using one of the three Defence sites in the Territory, but they are not necessarily suitable, either. Labor has said any dump site would be chosen by popular consent, but it knows that with this issue there will be no such thing as consent.