CHRIS UHLMANN, PRESENTER: The 40-year battle over how to dispose of Australia's growing pile of nuclear waste has erupted again with traditional land owners protesting in Darwin over plans for a new desert dump site. They're fighting a federal law passed last week approving a waste dump in the Northern Territory. Their battleground is the Federal Court where the nomination of the site may be overturned. But with nowhere else to send it, radioactive waste from life-saving nuclear medicine is piling up in hospitals, labs and universities in the suburbs. Rebecca Baillie has this report. 

REBECCA BAILLIE, REPORTER: What to do with Australia's radioactive waste has been a mounting problem since the 1950s. It's currently stored all over the country, from Lucas Heights nuclear reactor in Sydney's south-western suburbs, to Woomera in outback South Australia.

But it's also kept in some more surprising places.

MARTIN FERGUSON, RESOURCES AND ENERGY MINISTER: There are a hundred storage spots around Australia, principally in universities and hospitals, often in shipping containers. That is unacceptable.

PETER KARAMOSKOS, NUCLEAR RADIOLOGIST: There's no doubt that that needs to be dealt with, but the whole idea of management is responsible management, not just any management.

REBECCA BAILLIE: It may be outback, but Muckaty cattle station is front and centre of the heated debate about where to build a national radioactive waste facility.

PETER KARAMOSKOS: I've spoken to quite a few people, traditional owners from Muckaty and I can assure you they've been misled dreadfully. They've been lied to and deceived.

REBECCA BAILLIE: Resources and Energy Minister Martin Ferguson says it's a classic case of "Not in my backyard".

MARTIN FERGUSON: It's time for Australia to front up to its responsibilities. It is a moral issue. If you want access to nuclear medicine then take on the responsibility of storing your waste.

REBECCA BAILLIE: Sydney's busy Royal North Shore Public Hospital is just a few kilometres from the CBD. It's a major teaching and research hospital. It conducts nuclear medical diagnosis and therapy on patients with diseases from lung cancer, to liver cancer, kidney disease to dementia.

DALE BAILEY, NUCLEAR MEDICINE, ROYAL NORTH SHORE HOSPITAL: We inject into the patient so actually the patient becomes the radioactive waste itself, so most of the things that we use with patients don't pose a waste problem. However, if that somehow can escape from the patient then we do have a problem.

REBECCA BAILLIE: Nuclear medicine physicist at North Shore Dr Dale Bailey is also Professor in Medical Radiation Sciences at the University of Sydney. He agrees that radioactive waste is a problem that every major hospital in Australia faces.

DALE BAILEY: One of the sources that we're now looking at having to dispose of is 432-year half life, so that poses enormous issues for us and we don't have anywhere of course to store that.

REBECCA BAILLIE: Professor Bailey says North Shore Hospital's purpose-built, lead-lined storage cupboards are full of waste that will remain hazardous for hundreds of years.

So what do you think should happen to it?

DALE BAILEY: Well, it'd be useful to us if we could have a truck pull up to the back dock once a week and take away our radioactive waste.

REBECCA BAILLIE: Across the Sydney Harbour Bridge, just east of the CBD, is St Vincent's Public Hospital. The hospital's radiation safety officer, Cameron Jeffries, is doing his rounds.

CAMERON JEFFRIES, RADIATION SAFETY OFFICER, ST VINCENT'S HOSPITAL: Obviously with anything there's a risk, but what we're managing is keeping the risk from radiation usage in the hospital very, very low and well within the pre-defined limits.

REBECCA BAILLIE: Physicians like Dr Louise Emmett receive radio isotopes generated at Lucas Heights nuclear reactor. The doctors process the isotopes in the hospital and use them for both patient diagnosis and treatment.

LOUISE EMMETT, PHYSICIAN: The level of waste that we have within the hospital is very low grade. We keep that within a storage container until, until - well out of the way until it's not radioactive anymore.

REBECCA BAILLIE: Dr Louise Emmett sees no need for the small amounts of low-level waste stored within her department to be moved to an outback dump.

LOUISE EMMETT: In the vast majority of nuclear medicine practices the storage issue is not particularly current in terms of what we keep is short half life, up to sort of eight days half life, so it would be difficult to take that long distances for storage.

REBECCA BAILLIE: Some scientists believe that the issue of nuclear medicine is just convenient spin by a government trying to justify the proposed dump.

Nuclear radiologist Dr Peter Karamoskos says the real issue is waste stored elsewhere, mainly at Sydney's Lucas Heights.

PETER KARAMOSKOS: Nearly all of the waste has got nothing to do with medicine. Let's be clear on that. That's a furphy that Minister Ferguson has been promulgating, and I suggest mischievously too to get the public on side through an emotive campaign of disinformation.

REBECCA BAILLIE: There are two types of radioactive waste. Australia has 3,820 cubic metres of low-level waste stored at Lucas heights and Woomera. This includes lab equipment from the reactor and contaminated soil from CSIRO research in the 1950s and '60s. There's also 435 cubic metres of much more hazardous, intermediate-level material, including spent nuclear fuel rods, luminous paints and industrial waste. Most of this is at Lucas Heights.

PETER KARAMOSKOS: Low-level waste remains hazardous for about 300 years and needs to be isolated from humans in the environment for that long. Intermediate-level waste is much more hazardous. It's the most dangerous waste in Australia. That remains hazardous for many thousands of years.

REBECCA BAILLIE: Muckaty Station, 100 kilometres from Tennant Creek in the Northern Territory, has been named as the potential dump site in legislation which passed the Senate last week. The Northern Land Council nominated the site on behalf of local land owners five years ago. But other traditional owners have taken their fight to the Federal Court claiming they weren't consulted properly.

ELIZABETH O'SHEA, SOLICITOR, MAURICE LACKBURN: They were respected and known within the community as people who can speak for the land, and as such they should have been treated with that respect by the Northern Land Council.

MARTIN FERGUSON: Across Australia in a range of projects there are disputes with the Indigenous community about who are the traditional owners. These matters have and will continue to be resolved in the courts.

REBECCA BAILLIE: Under the Government's dump proposal, low-level waste will be buried about 30 metres below ground, in line with international best practice. But it's how the most hazardous material will be dealt with that has not only land owners worried. Dr Peter Karamoskos says the proposed storage of the intermediate-level waste in an above-ground warehouse is not good enough, saying it should be buried 300 metres below ground.

PETER KARAMOSKOS: If you don't have radioactive waste management policies that achieve that end, then you're imposing unnecessary risk. By unnecessary means why not adopt international best practice? It's what's required by law.

MARTIN FERGUSON: I reject that community representatives' proposition. We are seeking to act in accordance with our international obligations but also our domestic responsibilities to store our waste in a safe and responsible way.

REBECCA BAILLIE: If the Federal Court action is successful the Government's waste dump proposal goes back to square one.

ELIZABETH O'SHEA: Muckaty is the only nomination on site and we're confident that we have some serious arguments to put to a court about the legitimacy of that nomination, so it does return them to a difficult position of having nowhere to build the dump.

REBECCA BAILLIE: In the meantime, the dilemma of what to do with Australia's radioactive waste currently stored in the nation's big cities remains.

CHRIS UHLMANN: Rebecca Baillie reporting.