Antinuclear

Lynas Advanced Materials Plant (LAMP) – profits to Australians, radioactive wastes to Malaysia

Today, the government is the official custodian of this repository in Bukit Merah. This site in Bukit Merah is declared as a restricted and dangerous dump site for radioactive materials but a curtain of official silence has descended on it. Has the government not learnt from Bukit Merah?

The Lynas project is likely to be a replay of the ARE fiasco but on a much larger scale.

The benefits gained by Malaysia from the Lynas investment are very little relative to the risks involved. Whilst the profits of the project go to Lynas (untaxed) and the few Malaysian companies that are involved in the construction of and the provision of supplies to the Gebeng rare earth plant, the radioactive waste will remain in
Malaysian soil for hundreds of years.

Lynas issue: Not learning from bitter experience —The Malaysian Insider,  Richard Pendragon, April 12, 2012   — Every Malaysian should know that Australia has a land mass 58 times bigger than peninsular Malaysia. But the Australian government and people have not permitted rare earth processing to take place on Australian soil.
With a population that is vigilant and a government that answers to the people, Australia dares not permit a rare earth plant because the health and environmental risks are too high.

Why does Malaysia – a country with less scientific and engineering expertise – think it is all right to go ahead with the plant?

The USA has closed most of its mines, and so has China. In inner
Mongolia, vast tracts of lands and thousands of square kilometres have
been rendered hazardous, with toxic runoffs destroying everything in
their path, and with high radioactivity, tainting and polluting
precious water supplies.

This chain reaction will continue for thousands of years……   Malaysia is now planning to build the world’s largest rare earth
plant. This is truly madness of the highest order. We must remember
the Chernobyl meltdown which was not supposed to have happened and
similarly too the Fukushima nuclear plant meltdown in Japan.

Peninsular Malaysia would be dead meat if any unexpected catastrophe happens…..

Bukit Merah
The history of the rare earth industry in Malaysia is little known to
most Malaysians. Most Malaysians in fact think that the Lynas project
in Pahang is the first time Malaysia has been associated with this
industry.
Few Malaysians actually know that there was a rare earth plant in
Bukit Merah, Perak, which has been closed some 10 or more years ago,
following a ruling by the High Court of Malaysia that the company
involved was in negligence, and that the radioactive waste generated
by the plant was dangerous and had to be removed and secured in a safe
place away from people for hundreds of years.

The evidence of the hazardous legacy of this rare earth plant is still
present in our midst as a reminder to every one of the risks involved.
All you need is to take a trip to Bukit Merah and you will see the
existence of a restricted site where the toxic radioactive waste has
been stored in specially engineered concrete cells, and entombed
deeply in a repository, to prevent any leakage of radiation from the
radioactive waste for the next few hundred years.

The company that was involved in the rare earth plant was called Asian
Rare Earth Sdn Bhd (ARE). This was a joint venture established between
Mitsubishi Chemical Corp (MCC) of Japan, Beh Minerals Sdn Bhd, the
local partner and the government, through Tabung Haji in the early
nineties.

ARE was based in Menglembu, Ipoh and the joint venture was founded on
the basis that the local partner  would supply the raw materials
(tailings from the many tin mines in Perak) and MCC would provide the
technology and expertise to extract the rare earth minerals, by a
cracking process.

In this cracking process, along with the extraction of rare earth
minerals such as Monazite, Xenotime, Zircon, Yttrium etc, a waste
product called thorium hydroxide is produced and this substance is
radioactive.
Experts brought in to present evidence in support of the court hearing
against ARE testified that prolonged exposure to radiation leaked from
the radioactive waste materials from ARE’s rare earth plant would be
harmful to the health of the residents living in the Menglembu area,
where the plant was located.

ARE was subsequently closed and wound up.

The shareholders of the company had to engage a highly specialised
radioactive waste management consultancy firm from the US, called
Dames and Moore, to relocate, treat and dispose of the radioactive
waste from the dump site in Menglembu to a safe repository. The cost
of the whole exercise ran into hundreds of millions of US dollars to
contain radiation leak from the radioactive waste.

Meanwhile local residents have blamed the ARE refinery for the high
numbers of birth defects and leukaemia cases within the last five
years in a community of 11,000 — after many years of local history
with no leukaemia cases. Seven of the leukemia victims have died.

Some of the surviving residents of Bukit Merah are still plagued with
severe health problems. Until this very day, the Malaysian authorities
refuse to acknowledge that the radioactive waste was responsible for
the sudden escalation of health problems among the residents

Today, the government is the official custodian of this repository in Bukit Merah. This site in Bukit Merah is declared as a restricted and dangerous dump site for radioactive materials but a curtain of official silence has descended on it.

Learning from Bukit Merah
Has the government not learnt from Bukit Merah or will corporate
profits, lack of transparency and accountability, and cronyism trump
responsible and ethical governance?

The Lynas project is likely to be a replay of the ARE fiasco but on a
much larger scale. The Lynas project involves the shipment of rare
earth raw materials from Australia to Malaysia, and the extraction of
the rare earth minerals in the rare earth plant in Gebeng. The
cracking process to extract the rare earth minerals will similarly
produce thorium hydroxide.

Little attention has been paid to the containment process of this
hazardous radioactive waste which will be generated once the Rare
Earth Plant comes into production. Notwithstanding the high risks
nature of the Lynas project, there are few benefits that Malaysia
could gain by having such a hazardous project on our shores.

Lynas and its crony local contractors and shareholders will be the
major beneficiary from such a project. They will be able to export the
rare earth minerals at a huge profit and enjoy a 20-year tax holiday
since the project is approved and supported by the Malaysian
government.

At the same time they will leave behind a whole lot of radioactive
waste on Malaysian soil, free from the stringent environmental
scrutiny and monitoring found in developed countries.

Apart from creating a handful of jobs in the Gebeng area, the only
people who stand to benefit from this project other than Lynas owners
and shareholders, are the people who build the cracking plant in
Gebeng and those who supply chemicals to the plant for the cracking
process.
Who are these stakeholders and why have they continued to remain in
the dark and unaccountable?

Malaysians must ask the question: “Why did the Government approve the
Lynas project?” It does not seem to make any sense when:

The Malaysian court under the same government has ruled that the rare
earth plant, in the case of ARE, is regarded as hazardous. The
evidence is there to be seen by everyone in Bukit Merah where the
repository is located. “

The benefits gained by Malaysia from the Lynas investment are very
little relative to the risks involved. Whilst the profits of the
project go to Lynas (untaxed) and the few Malaysian companies that are
involved in the construction of and the provision of supplies to the
Gebeng rare earth plant, the radioactive waste will remain in
Malaysian soil for hundreds of years.

The argument that with proper containment, the risks will be rendered
harmless, does not hold. Containment, as we know and have seen, is
only as good as when there is no accident. Look at Chernobyl and
Fukushima. These nuclear reactors are all supposed to have adequate
and radiation leak-proof containment features approved by so called
international experts.

All Malaysians must ask the government why the Lynas project was
approved in spite of the history of ARE and the lack of economic
justification of how this project could benefit Malaysians relative to
its high and unacceptable risks.

All Malaysians must stand together and demand the closure of the Lynas
Advanced Materials Plant (LAMP)……
http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/sideviews/article/lynas-issue-not-learning-from-bitter-experience-richard-pendragon

April 13, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, politics international