Europe 1 radio reported the find in the flat of Willie Virgile Brigitte, who was deported last month, as Australian police said they had sent a team of agents to France to interrogate the suspected Islamic militant.

The radio station did not identify the nuclear reactor shown in the photographs, but said the list of bomb-making materials uncovered in Brigitte's apartment were for explosives typically used by the al-Qaeda network.

Brigitte, 35, has been held by French counter-terrorism authorities in a prison outside Paris since he was deported on October 17, after France warned he could have been in Australia for "terror-related reasons".

Media reports have speculated Brigitte was setting up an al-Qaeda sleeper cell, passing on bomb-making skills and considering the possibility of attacking the Lucas Heights nuclear reactor, on Sydney's southern outskirts.

"We have deployed some of our members to France as part of ongoing inquiries into the Brigitte matter," an Australian Federal Police spokeswoman said Tuesday.

She refused to comment on a report in the Australian press that the federal police's director of counter-terrorism Tim Morris would join France's top anti-terrorism judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere in questioning Brigitte.

Australian authorities are unsure exactly what Brigitte may have been planning during his five-month stay in Sydney, but the head of the country's top spy agency ASIO said last week he was "almost certainly involved in activities with the intention of doing harm in Australia".

WAR.WIRE