The Greens suspect the Senate nuclear waste debate was timed intentionally to coincide with the federal budget.

Greens Senator Scott Ludlam said legislation to set up Australia's first nuclear waste dump at Muckaty Station, near Tennant Creek, was listed for debate in the Senate on Tuesday, when the federal budget will be handed down.

'It's a sign that the government's got something to hide ... it's curious timing,' he told AAP.

'It's nasty scheduling.

'When the rest of the country will be rightly examining the state of the nation's finances, (resources minister) Martin Ferguson wants to set up the nation's first ever radio-active nuclear waste dump.

'He's doing it with the full agreement and complicity of the Prime Minister.'

The National Radioactive Waste Management Bill 2010 passed through federal parliament's lower house in February, despite the opposition abstaining from the vote.

Senator Ludlam said the bill should not be debated in the Senate until after the Federal Court delivers its decision about which groups of Aborigines are the rightful custodians and traditional owners of Muckaty Station.

'The federal government should do the traditional owners the courtesy of waiting until that dispute is resolved.

'They've (local Aborigines) been telling us for six years that the lines of traditional responsibility are much more complex that what the Northern Land Council or the government have been acknowledging.

'It's an awful dispute that's dividing families.'

Senator Ludlam said the Greens would seek to make a range of amendments to the bill, including the introduction of a commission to determine the safest way of dealing with uranium waste material.

'There are strong lines of evidence to suggest, in the short term before the industry can make a coherent case for final disposal, this stuff is actually a lot safer under the active care and maintenance of the people who produce it,' he said.

'And that's a really different scenario to carting it 3500km on a road train and dumping it in a shed on a cattle station.'

Labor had promised to throw out the Howard government's plans to establish a site for radioactive waste at Muckaty, but in February last year the government confirmed Muckaty remained the only site being considered.

'The sad thing is that Labor has reached new lows. It's gone places even the coalition didn't go,' Senator Ludlam said.

About 120 people marched through the streets of Tennant Creek on Sunday in protest against the waste being trucked through the town and stored nearby.