Antinuclear

Last week the case for a storage facility on Muckaty Station in the Northern Territory was reopened when one of the clan groups proposed a second parcel of land, just months after a bitter seven-year dispute appeared to have ended.

The Northern Land Council (NLC) had abandoned its nomination to the federal government to store low and intermediate radioactive waste in the area north of Tennant Creek as part of a settlement reached outside the federal court. It is now considering the new proposal.

One of the traditional owners, Dianne Stokes, told Guardian Australia the new proposal takes the fight “back to square one.”

“We fought very hard before, and we started off talking. We didn’t know what state it was going to come to,” said Stokes.

“It’s the same fight about the waste in Muckaty. We said to the ministers … we don’t want any waste coming to Muckaty Land Trust.”

She and other traditional owners were discussing their wish for Muckaty Station to become part of the Central Land Council (CLC), which last week conclude a meeting without nominating a site in the Tanami region in part because of strong opposition to the federal government’s nomination process and a lack of information on aspects such as compensation and waste transportation.

“Industry minister Ian Macfarlane’s requirement of a site ‘free from dispute’ cannot therefore be met,” the council said in a statement.

“The traditional owners are behind us,” said Stokes about her calls to leave the NLC.

“[Muckaty] has strong cultural areas, it’s a strong story that we have behind it. We have very strong songs and very strong cultural lifetime story for it. We don’t want it broken.”

Stokes said in a statement the traditional owners opposed to the dump site want the NLC to follow the CLC’s lead and abandon the idea as there is so much dispute at Muckaty Station.

“There will be no nuclear waste dump inside the Muckaty Land Trust no matter how hard they try,” she said. “This is why we say that the land council boundary needs to be moved back out of Warlmanpa country, so the CLC can take care of our land rights. We trust how they work and we are very happy with the support they gave us on this struggle.”

Guardian Australia understands the idea has been discussed previously, with no apparent mechanism under the Aboriginal Land Rights Act found to allow it.

The nomination process for the nuclear dump site will be open to national tender in the hope that an environmentally suitable nomination could be made free of dispute.

Environment groups and unions have called for an inquiry into nuclear waste management instead, given the disputes and controversies sparked by the nomination process.

Radioactive waste is a difficult issue, but it is not an impossible one,” Australian Conservation Foundation spokesman Dave Sweeney said in a statement.

“Radioactive waste lasts far longer than any politician and we need to get its management responsible and right. The best way to do this is through an open, independent and evidence based approach that moves stakeholders from the trenches to the table”.

• This article was amended on 14 November 2014. The original incorrectly said the CLC had ruled out making a nomination for a nuclear dump site on their land, and that the national tender had already begun. These have been corrected.