A remote cattle station in South Australia has been chosen as the possible site for Australia’s first nuclear waste dump, according to news reports today.

The station at Barndioota, close to the Flinders Ranges 400 kilometres north of Adelaide, has been selected by the government ahead of five other possible sites offered by the landowners.

The Barndioota station is owned by former senator and Liberal Party state president Grant Chapman.

The Adelaide Advertiser newspaper said the value of the land is expected to increase four times if it is finally picked to take low- to intermediate-level nuclear waste from around the country.

Chapman told the broadcaster ABC the nuclear waste would be buried in a bunker that would take up 100 hectares of his 25,000-hectare cattle farm, and would be the size of “four Olympic swimming pools”.

Resources Minister Josh Frydenberg will spell out details of the decision later today, but told the newspaper it will take 12 months to assess the infrastructure needed to establish a nuclear dump at the site and consult the local community.

“I again emphasise that this facility will only be established at a site that has broad community support and meets Australia’s strict environmental and radiation protection regulatory requirements,” Frydenberg told the Advertiser.

Australia could end up offering the site to the rest of the world to use as a nuclear dump, including spent nuclear fuel.

An inquiry into the nuclear industry set up by the South Australian government concluded A$445 billion (US$340 billion) could be made taking the world’s nuclear waste.

The Nuclear Royal Commission final report is due to be released on May 6.

Local Aboriginal tribal leader Enice Marsh said her people were against the nuclear dump and fear it would disturb important cultural heritage sites.

“It’s an insult to traditional owners that they are being ignored,” she told the Advertiser.

- dpa