A FEDERAL Liberal MP who offered his own farm as the site for a low and medium-level domestic nuclear waste dump, says setting up a facility to store high-level waste from overseas, as proposed by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, would be vastly more complicated and politically difficult.
"It's not the same thing, I don't even think the two issues should be compared," said Liberal MP Rowan Ramsey, who holds the vast South Australian electorate of Grey which covers the state's entire north.
On Wednesday, Mr Turnbull commended South Australian Labor Premier Jay Weatherill for establishing a royal commission to examine the state's nuclear industry potential. Mr Turnbull did not envision a need for nuclear power, but supported the state becoming involved in the nuclear fuel cycle in which it would produce fuel rods, export them, and then bring them home once spent and store them in an outback waste facility.
The industry would be worth billions to the state. But since 1999, successive federal governments have been trying to establish a dump just to take low-level waste used by universities and hospitals which is stored variously in basements and sheds around the country, and reprocessed fuel rods from the Lucas Heights research reactor.
A shipload of these rods, which are classified as medium-level waste, sent to France a decade ago for reprocessing is due home soon. With no place to store the radioactive material yet established, a special facility has been built at Lucas Heights in outer Sydney to store them until a location is secured.
After being repeatedly rebuffed in South Australia, the federal government settled on Muckaty Station in the Northern Territory but abandoned it in 2014 after a legal challenge by traditional owners. It then called for farmers to volunteer their land.
Mr Ramsey, who has a property outside Kimba in South Australia's west, volunteered, but was told by then Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane, it would constitute a perceived conflict of interest.
Subsequently, three of Mr Ramsey's rural neighbours volunteered and they, along with four other sites outside South Australia have been shortlisted.
The list was to be released in September but was held up by the leadership change. Resources Minister Josh Frydenberg will release the list before Christmas.
The issue has caused unrest in the rural community around Kimba from farmers opposed the domestic waste dump. Mr Ramsey said it would create jobs and revenue through a promised community trust fund.
With the issue at a sensitive stage, he said it was important the low-level waste dump not be confused with what Mr Turnbull proposed, which would be exporting and bringing back high-level waste.
The federal government's submission to the Royal Commission emphasises the low-level waste dump process "is separate to the (Commission's) investigation of wider opportunities associated with waste management".
Nuclear activist Dr Jim Green, from Friends of the Earth, said Mr Turnbull's proposal made no sense if only because there was already a global oversupply of nuclear fuel.
South Australian Liberal Senator Sean Edwards stepped up his push for a full nuclear industry - power and enrichment - in his home state, saying it would "create a very bright economic future for SA".
