THE Territory is to charge "rent" for storing radioactive waste.

Payments will be put into a special fund and spent on the cancer ward at Royal Darwin Hospital.

Only the NT and federal governments will be allowed to send low-level waste to the Muckaty dump near Tennant Creek free of charge.

Canberra will kick off the fund with a $10 million payment.

But that money will be taken back out of rent money from states and territories using the dump.

The fund is expected to collect several millions of dollars a year.

Territory Senator Nigel Scullion used the fund as the price for the Coalition allowing the National Radioactive Waste Management Bill to be passed by the Senate.

He has insisted that the money not be used for recurrent expenditure, such as paying wages, but for infrastructure or scholarships.

"It was unfair that the other states and territories were going to use the repository for nothing."

The Senator said the rent would be paid for the life of the dump.

Barkly Labor MLA Gerry McCarthy dismissed the fund as "bribery".

Some traditional owners are taking legal action in a bid to stop the dump being built.

Trade unionists also criticised the fund deal.

United Voice NT secretary Matthew Gardiner said: "There is still a Federal Court case hearing whether Muckaty Station can be used as the site, yet we have politicians bickering over what filthy lucre they can get.

"The waste will affect every Territorian, as it will be in our ports, on our trains and on our roads.

"Every major town in the NT will see Australia's lethal waste being transported past their offices, schools and homes."

Muckaty will take mostly medical waste.

Environment Centre co-ordinator Stuart Blanch said the fund was "attempted bribery" by the Federal Government and Coalition.

"It's insulting to Territorians to be asked to accept nuclear waste that will last perhaps a couple thousand years in exchange for money to build health facilities," he said.

"Territorians pay taxes and deserve those facilities because we're Australians, not because we sign up to a waste dump."

The CLP yesterday dug out a 2007 Labor election poster declaring: "Stop Tollner's nuclear waste dump."

But a CLP Senator and the Labor federal representatives have now voted for the dump.