DOCTORS have dismissed suggestions a nuclear waste facility is needed for nuclear medicine and questioned whether remote storage of spent radioactive materials is necessary at all.

The reaction comes as the government is this week expected to debate a proposal for a nuclear dump in the Indigenous-controlled Muckaty Station in the Northern Territory. An ongoing legal challenge against a Muckaty facility is also scheduled to continue in October.

"Linking the alleged need for a central radioactive waste storage facility with the production of isotopes for nuclear medicine is misleading,” Melbourne nuclear radiologist Dr Peter Karamoskos said in a statement.

He said any decision on a radioactive dump in the Northern Territory “will in no way affect my nuclear medicine practice nor that of any of my colleagues around Australia”. He said government claims that a waste facility was needed to support nuclear medicine was “mischievous scaremongering".

Activist groups including the Public Health Association of Australia, the Medical Association for Prevention of War, the Aboriginal Medical Services Alliance, Doctors for the Environment Australia and the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation are holding a forum on the subject at Charles Darwin University tonight.

The organisations want a public inquiry into whether a remote radioactive dump is needed at all, amid some suggestions spent nuclear components are best stored close to their source to avoid movement. The government has been searching for a nuclear dump site for over 30 years and Muckaty, north of Tennant Creek, is just the latest in a long list of candidates.

Adelaide River GP Dr Michael Fonda, speaking on behalf of the activist groups, said even if a waste facility was needed, there was no reason it should be in the Northern Territory. He said the Bureau of Resource Sciences did not consider Muckaty “suitable” in a 1990s study.

“The federal government should go back to square one and thoroughly consider radioactive waste management options," he said.