Lynas Corp taking advantage of lax environmental laws, says Fuziah
By Shazwan Mustafa Kamal
KUALA LUMPUR, May 25 - PKR's Fuziah Salleh accused Lynas Corp of adopting weaker
safety standards for its Kuantan rare earths refinery, relying on lax local environmental laws
to use suspect Chinese standards.
The Kuantan MP based her claims on the Australian miner's previous proposal to the
Terengganu state government back in 2007, which quoted standards from China for the
Lynas Advanced Materials Plant (Lamp).
"It goes further to strengthen my argument that Lynas is using different standards in
Australia and different standards in Malaysia. Lynas is also taking advantage of the lax
environmental laws in Malaysia to push a proposal using the Chinese Standards," she said
in a statement.
According to Fuziah, the radiation specific activity based on Chinese standards sets the limit
of 74 becquerels per gram (Bq/g), therefore the waste will be categorised as "nonradioactive."
This, she said was a problem because based on limits set by Australia's Department of
Industry and Resources (Doir) on the Lynas Concentration Plant in Mt Weld, any radiation
specific activity exceeding the limit of 1Bq/g was already deemed "radioactive".
The amendments to work approval on the Lynas Rare Earth Concentration Plant dated April
1, 2011 revealed that the radiation specific activity of the tailings of the Lynas Plant in Mt
Weld had exceeded the radioactive limit. The Environmental Assessment Report that
accompanied the amendments also stated that Lynas needed to increase the impermeability
of the lining of
their storage facility and that Lynas has not complied to the original requirements.
In contrast, Fuziah said that Malaysia's Atomic Energy Licensing Board (AELB) had easily
approved environmental the impact assessment (EIA) on the Lynas Plant in Gebeng without
"any criticisms."
"Considering the PEIA on LAMP was received by the DOE of Pahang on the January 20,
2008 and approved 3 weeks later on the February 15, 2008, I wonder why is it that it was too
easy for DOE of Pahang to give an approval on such a high risk project. This goes to
strengthen my argument that the
Malaysian government does not have the capacity to monitor the enforcement on the safety
of an industry such as Lamp," added Fuziah.
The UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has unveiled the team that will conduct
an evaluation of the controversial RM700 million rare earths refinery in Gebeng, Pahang.
The panel of IAEA experts will be in Malaysia from May 29 to June 3.
Fuziah said that the only acceptable safety standards which should be utilised by the panel
of experts were IAEA'a Safety Code, and "nothing less".
"Since the scope of work for the panel of experts include the various aspects of handling the
project from transportation to occupational health to processing and decommissioning, we
hereby assert that we expect the Panel to strictly adhere to the various IAEA Safety Code
regards the above scope
of work, and nothing less," the PKR vice-president stressed.
Fuziah has been lobbying to halt the Australian miner from firing up its gigantic Lynas
Advanced Materials Plant (Lamp) ahead of its scheduled September start date, which the
Sydney-based company said is still on track despite a government review.
Lynas Corp is facing mounting opposition from residents and environmentalists who fear a
repeat of the radiation pollution from a similar plant in Bukit Merah, Ipoh.
The Asian Rare Earth (ARE) plant in Perak has been linked to birth defects and at least eight
cases of leukaemia in the past five years, seven of which were fatal. Nearly 20 years after it
was shuttered, the plant is still the subject of a massive RM300 million cleanup exercise.
Summary
As we know, Lynas project is making controversial among people either in Malaysia or other
places. The controversial Lynas rare earths refinery in Kuantan is plagued by
environmentally hazardous construction and design problems, the New York Times has
reported, citing internal memos and current and former engineers on the project. Lynas is
mining rare earths ore deep in the Australian desert and shipping to Malaysia to be mixed
with powerful acids to make a slightly radioactive slurry that would be pumped through the
tanks, with operating temperatures of about 200 degrees Fahrenheit. Eventhough it has
many disadvantage but the reason why this project is design in Malaysia because Thorium is
the one of the chemical that can generate electrical power replace the uranium function in
the world. Based on this matter, our country can produce about tens of thousands of tonnes
Thorium as a radioactive residue. Furthermore, the Thorium is used as a basic material in
nuclear plant. Many people is not agreed with this project because the disadvantage of the
project is more than the advantage. Some of them may have a thinking that the project is not
too dangerous but people who are in the real field had a different thinking. Same like Fuziah,
the PKR's accused Lynas Corp of adopting weaker safety standards for its Kuantan rare
earths refinery, relying on lax local environmental laws to use suspect Chinese standards.
Due to this topic also, they had related the effect of radioactive affect the human health
showed in The Asian Rare Earth (ARE) plant is Perak where it linked to birth defects and at
least 8 cases of leukaemia in the past five years, seven of which were fatal. Nearly 20 years
after it was shuttered, the plant is still the subject of a massive RM300 million cleanup
exercise.