Antinuclear

Foreign experts begin Lynas probe The Star Online: troon  May 30, 2011  An Australian Co., Lynas, is building the REE refinery in Malaysia. However, that refinery can never be deemed as safe, because accidents happen. It is not only the thorium 232 radioactive alpha particles, those from the ores and the waste, that could accidentally be released into the air as dust, (lung cancer), and into water, (liver cancers etc.), but there is the possiblility of accidental release of highly toxic gases that are REE refining by-products, such as fluorine, radon, (radio-active), and sulphur dioxide. There will also be millions of gallons of waste water loaded with toxic cadmium and other carcinogenic, DNA damaging, heavy metals.

Even before any licence is issued, and before an `accidental`spill, one should ask Lynas how they have planned to clean-up these. Japan had a cadmium disaster at Minamata. China today has an underground thorium time bomb from REE refining! The Chinese REE miners are sick from radiation poisoning. We know little of the harm from the toxic gases in China.

The United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA, experts will evaluate this plant, BUT only for radiation, and that, during normal operations! They are the same experts who declared Fukushima safe, even with NO protective wall around the cooling pumps. These pumps were destroyed by the tsunami. Yet, other Japanese Nuke plants had voluntarily built massive sea walls for these pumps, and that saved their plants!
These same experts told Thailand that Nuke Plants are 100% safe, just before Fukushima blew. How could they make that claim, after the Chernobyl and many other accidents? Because accidents are not in their reckoning!. They dont even control well, for they allowed Tokyo Electric to police themselves! Malaysia is trusting these people for the ongoing review.

Chernobyl, Ukraine, 3 Mile Island, USA, Sellafield UK, Nukeplants in Germany and France, and Fukushima, all had `accidental` spills, though all were `safe`. I recently spoke to a retired UK Nuke Plant engineer and he said that if he had worked at Sellafield, he would have died a long time ago.

China’s rare earth industry each year produces more than five times the amount of waste gas, (including deadly fluorine, radio-active radon, and sulfur dioxide), than the total flared annually by all miners and oil refiners in the U.S. Alongside that 13 billion cubic meters of gas comes 25 million tons of waste water laced with cancer-causing heavy metals such as cadmium.

In the United States, very old laws still allow rare earth businesses to meet much less stringent standards for radioactivity in products and waste than other industries, precisely because… it is SO HARD to really handle these materials cleanly!!

The New York Times reported last October, that the tailings pond at Baotou, China is leaking an underground bloom of thorium that is moving toward the Yellow River at 300 meters per year; the river is 7 kilometers away. The Chinese have since confirmed this.
The Lynas chairman Nicholas Curtis claims that they have permission from the government to store the waste onsite forever. On the other hand, AELB’s (Atomic Energy Licensing Board) director general Raja Datuk Abdul Aziz Raja refutes that claim in saying that the plant can only store waste temporarily. If the onsite storage is temporary, where will the waste be shipped to next? It will definitely not be bound for its place of origin Australia, after Western Australian minister for mines and petroleum, fisheries and electoral affairs Norman Moore flatly rejected calls to take back Lynas’ radioactive waste.

Moreover, Raja Aziz claims that Lynas’ waste is safe enough to be scattered everywhere if Lynas can keep the thorium level in its waste to 1,600 parts per million. Then again, if the waste is safe, why is it necessary for Lynas to build storage pools for it, and why does Raja Aziz refuse permission for Lynas to store the waste permanently? The most plausible explanation is that neither Lynas nor AELB are confident that the ‘safe’ thorium level can be met. If that is the case, the authorities have betrayed the people of Kuantan by exposing them to unknown and unnecessary health risks.

So far, Lynas has refused to comment as to whether there is uranium, as suspected, in the REE ores they plan to also import from Malawi, Central East Africa.
The Malaysian Med. Assn. is up in arms, as this project was sneaked in under the radar without consultations, without environment studies etc. especially so as a previous REE refinery in the same State is still trying to cleanup, ten years after it was forced to shut due to protests. Leukaemia clusters have been reported there! BTW the life of thorium 232 is but 14 BILLION, (14,000,000,000) years.

One must also keep in mind, that if an accidental spill or leak should occur, it is in the best interest of Lynas, and the Govt. (that would have given licence for such), to keep very quiet. When clusters of leukaemia, lung and liver cancers, and the crippling effects of cadmium, occur, they WILL deny any association. The alpha particle radiation from thorium is not even detectable with a Geiger counter, as the particles do not pass into the sensor.

Radioactive leaks worldwide have been hushed up or lied about by plant owners, IAEA and Govts. After Chernobyl, the UN said that a few thousand died, but medics say over 1 million have died. A reactor at Fukushima melted down a few days after the tsunami, but it took the IAEA 2 months to announce it, and that only after alternative news sites had exposed the accident.

One also wonders what brave Malaysians would go to work in an industrial estate with a nearby toxic bomb.

After a licence is issued, it will be very difficult to say, NO refining.

In any case, Malaysia is NOT going to save the non-Chinese world with locally refined REE. (China now controls 97% of the REE market).
A massive REE refinery, from the old Soviet era, is about to restart in Kyrgystan. The operator is a Canadian miner, Stans Energy Corp. Stans has just this week sealed the final deals and now owns 100% of the refinery, the railhead, the massive NEARBY mine, plus licence for another large nearby REE find…