LEGISLATION to create a nuclear waste dump in the Northern Territory will be debated in Federal Parliament today.

The Labor Government plans to establish a national radioactive waste dump at Muckaty, 120km north of Tennant Creek.

The Howard government first nominated Muckaty as one of four possible sites for a nuclear waste dump in September 2007.

Muckaty is the only site being considered by the Labor Government and Federal Resources Minister Martin Ferguson.

NT Chief Minister Paul Henderson has said the site should be chosen for scientific reasons, not because the NT was a constitutional "weak link".

In March last year Mr Ferguson announced the Howard government's nuclear waste legislation would be repealed and a new one created but Green groups believe the old one has simply been "cut and pasted".

The proposed dump would hold low-level and intermediate-level waste and Mr Ferguson said in March last year that the storage facility needed to be established before Australian waste was brought back from Scotland and France in 2014 and 2015.

There is about 4000 cubic metres of low-level waste in Australia. There are less than 400 cubic metres of intermediate waste, much of it from spent fuel from the Lucas Heights reactor near Sydney. The National Radioactive Waste Management 2010 was introduced into the House of Representatives in October and a House Climate Change, Environment and the Arts Committee report released in December recommended the laws be passed.

Australian Conservation Foundation Nuclear Free Campaigner Dave Sweeney said the Government planned to ignore and override NT legislation which sought to ban the imposition of nuclear dumps.