Resources Minister Josh Frydenberg is poised to release a shortlist of sites that could play host to a permanent nuclear waste storage facility in Australia.
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Fairfax Media has been told the shortlist contains seven possible locations for the facility and had been finalised and approved by the Abbott government before Ian Macfarlane was replaced as Resources Minister by Mr Frydenberg.
The list of sites was originally scheduled to be released by August. Mr Frydenberg now intends to release the short list by the end of the year, after consulting with local MPs affected the decision, the opposition and other stakeholders over the politically sensitive issue.
Two locations in South Australia's Kimba shire, west of Port Augusta, and two in Western Australia, at Leonora, north of Kalgoorlie and Yalgoo, north of Perth, have voluntarily nominated to be considered for the shortlist, while a proposal for the facility to be located at Mt Isa, in remote Queensland, was recently advanced. The full list of possible locations is a tightly held secret.
Once the shortlist has been released, a further period of public consultations will begin before a preferred site is identified in mid-2016, with a detailed business case due in mid-2017 and construction and operation of the facility due by the end of the decade.
The pending decision on the waste facility comes amid renewed debate on a possible future nuclear industry in Australia.
The facility will store low and intermediate-level radioactive waste from Lucas Heights and Australian-produced waste that had been sent to France, the United States and Britain between 1996 and 2009, which is to be returned under an international agreement.
An interim facility has been constructed at Lucas Heights to hold waste being sent back to Australia. A general purpose cargo ship called the BBC Shanghai is currently en route to Port Kembla from the French port of Cherbourg carrying 25 tonnes of waste and is due to arrive at the end of the month. The waste aboard that ship will then be driven to the Lucas Heights facility.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull went further on Wednesday, suggesting that many Australians had a "perfectly reasonable" view that said "we have got the uranium, we mine it, why don't we process it, turn it into the fuel rods, lease it to people overseas, when they are done, we bring them back and we have got stable, very stable geology in remote locations and a stable political environment".
"That is a business that you could well imagine here."
South Australian Labor Premier Jay Weatherill has an ongoing royal commission into the nuclear industry.
The Australian Conservation Foundation's anti-nuclear campaigner Dave Sweeney, who was also a member of the government's advisory panel on the permanent waste facility, said achieving consent from residents of whatever area was selected for the site was crucial.
"Successive governments have failed to realise the importance of this [consent], or to achieve it. We are at the point of the process now, which is the test of the government's commitment to community inclusion and having social licence to do this," he said.
"We believe there is no environmental or public health reason to rush this [site selection]. The majority of the waste is currently in secured federal facilities and we need to take the time to get it right."
