A SIMPLE telephone call from the Outback township of Elliott to the Northern Land Council headquarters in Darwin sparked the most divisive debate in the Territory since the Statehood referendum in 1998.

Traditional owner Amy Lauder rang to say that Muckaty Station should be considered as the site for Australia's first nuclear waste dump. Her word carries a lot of weight.

She is a member of the NLC full council and her husband, Jeffrey Dixon, is on the executive council.

And both are leaders of the Ngapa group.

NLC anthropologists Robert Graham, Brendan Corrigan and Kim Barber carried out a study for a Land Commission hearing in 1995 to determine who the traditional owners of Muckaty were. They concluded that the Ngapa was the dominant group.

So the nuclear waste dump deal was done - not with the 395 people who consider themselves traditional owners of the whole of Muckaty but with the 40 who are recognised as the traditional owners of the small waste dump site.

A sizeable number of people in the Barkly region argue that the whole process was undemocratic.

What's the truth?

In 2006, the then Coalition Federal Government announced that it had identified three Defence-owned sites in the Northern Territory for a low-level nuclear waste depository.

They were Fishers Ridge, 40km east of RAAF Base Tindal near Katherine; Hart's Range, 200km northeast of Alice Springs; and Mount Everard, 42km northwest of Alice Springs.

A lengthy scientific study had identified Outback South Australia as the best site for the dump.

But SA is a State and, therefore, had the constitutional power denied the Northern Territory to tell Canberra where to go.

The federal Science Department, beaten by the SA Government in the High Court, sent two scientists to Darwin to give a presentation to the full council of the NLC, even though none of the preferred sites were on indigenous land.

Why? Was the department scouting for offers from Aboriginal landowners?

If so, it struck lucky. Within a day or so of the presentation, Ms Lauder made the call to Darwin that would send shockwaves through the Barkly.

The Canberra scientists hurried north and examined several sites on Muckaty.

Interestingly, they went with traditional owner Dianne Stokes to her country in the west of the old cattle station - but rejected the site because it's often waterlogged.

Ms Stokes is now the most virulent opponent of the dump. What would her attitude have been if Canberra had chosen her land for the dump?

The NLC says support for the deal is unanimous among the Ngapa clan that owns the dump site and "overwhelmingly" in favour among the other Muckaty clans.

Of course, no formal vote was ever taken, so it's impossible to gauge the truth of this without contacting every traditional owner.

The NLC accepts that at least some traditional owners, such as Ms Stokes, are angry and embittered about what they see as being railroaded into a deal that their descendants will have to live with for generations.

On the other side of the argument, supporters of the dump say that the attitude of some traditional owners is influenced by financial considerations and that greenies are exploiting Aboriginal people, that they are using Muckaty in their broad argument against nuclear power.

And nobody lives permanently on Muckaty.

What now?

The NT Government will order an environmental assessment of the project.

Chief Minister Paul Henderson opposes the dump _ he says the NT site has been chosen by politics not science _ but promises the environmental assessment process will not be corrupted.

``There won't be any monkey business,'' he says.

Even Friends of the Earth accepts that it's possible to run a nuclear waste dump safely, so the proposal is likely to be approved after an emotive inquiry.

The dump will cost $30million and sit on 225ha of land on the southern border of Muckaty, about 10km west of the Stuart Highway, 10km east of the Amadeus gas pipeline and 15km east of the railway.

It will be reached by a good road built to transport manganese from the Bootu Creek mine to the Darwin train line.

The dump is likely to be finished within two years.

Tennant Creek will benefit economically from the construction and security guards will be needed until 2310, give or take a year.

Traditional owners will be paid $12million for hosting what will be little more than an ugly concrete bunker. The money will be put into a trust.

The NLC concedes that the lion's share of the money will go to Amy Lauder's clan, but says other traditional owner will also benefit.

It can't say how the cash will be divvied up, leading some to say that those who own land away from the dominant Ngapa group will be beggars at the rich man's table.

The NLC also concedes that $12million is not much money for such a momentous deal, but argues that is far more than the relatively small block of Outback land would be worth freehold.

The deal between Canberra and the NLC has a curious footnote _ the dump site must be handed back to traditional owners after 300 years.

Australia produces only a small amount of nuclear waste, some of it in the manufacture of medical instruments. There is an argument that we have an obligation to store it safely.

The dump will hold 4555cubic metres of low and intermediate-level waste, not enough to fill an average back yard.

Intermediate waste from France and Scotland will be added to the pile after next year and that will be the equivalent of three large fridges.

And the decommissioning of Lucas Heights in 2017 will add a further 492cubic m.

High-level nuclear waste will be created if Australia goes nuclear.

But spent fuel rods would be kept underwater at the reactor site for 70 years and then buried one kilometres below ground.

A site has already been identified for that dump _ Territorians might be pleased to known that it's just across the border in South Australia.