The Federal Government is dangling a $10 million offer for the community that embraces Australia’s first nuclear waste dump, but has promised not to make a unilateral decision.

Overnight, the government released a shortlist of six sites nominated to store low-to-intermediate nuclear waste, with three of them located in South Australia.

The sites are Cortlinye, Pinkawillinie, and Barndioota in South Australia, Hale in the Northern Territory, Sallys Flat in New South Wales and Oman Ama in Queensland.

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The government put out the call for landholders to nominate their properties to house the facilities earlier this year.

Resources and Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg said landholders stood to recoup four times the value of their properties, and the local community near the preferred site would have access to $10 million to put towards infrastructure projects.

“We won’t unilaterally pick one, this is a voluntary community consultative process,” Mr Frydenberg said.

“Australia currently has the equivalent of around two Olympic-sized swimming pools of such waste, which may include laboratory items such as paper, plastic and glassware, and material used in medical treatments.

The waste dump shortlist was released overnight. Photo: ABC

“More than 100 sites across the country, including hospitals and universities, are licensed to store this waste on an interim basis.

“The facility will be designed, built and operated to the highest safety and environmental standards.

“This will require a thorough assessment by the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency, Australia’s independent radiation safety regulator, and an environmental assessment.”

However, residents have voiced their opposition to the plan.

Lino Alvarez, who lives in Hill End, near Sallys Flat in New South Wales, said the proposition was “disgusting”.

“It will be a danger to everything,” he said.

Bathurst Climate Action Network head Tracy Carpenter said Bathurst, which is an hour away from Sallys Flat, had been a sister city with Okuma in Japan, one of the towns affected by the Fukushima nuclear disaster.

“People cannot occupy [Okuma] since the tsunami and earthquake and the result [of] the nuclear disaster and now we’re being slated as an area to dump nuclear waste,” she said.

“It’s just appalling.”

But Mr Frydenberg says he’s optimistic about the way communities will react.

“We’ve chosen six [sites] after rigorous analysis, including input from an expert panel that’s looked at the environmental, the geological, the engineering and the economic impacts of each particular site,” he said.

He said the facility would only house low and intermediate level waste.

“Low level waste is those gloves or those goggles or the paper or the plastic that comes into contact with nuclear medicine, and intermediate waste could be, for example, those steel rods that are used in the reactor to actually create these particular products.”

The release of the shortlist comes amid growing debate over the role of nuclear power in the Australian economy.

The South Australian Government is currently undertaking a royal commission into the nuclear fuel cycle, examining what role it could play in the state economy — already hit hard by the decline of the manufacturing and mining industries.

The Howard Government faced strong opposition when it outlined a desire to store waste in remote SA.

– ABC