Environmentalists and Malaysia’s opposition parties, particularly the Democratic Action Party, have been warning that Lynas has the potential to create the same kind of environmental and public health problems that the workers and residents of Bukit Merah endured….
The Federation of Malaysian Consumer Associations is demanding that no thorium — a major problem at the Bukit Merah site – be stored in the country.
Lynas Malaysia and the rare earth controversy, Asia Sentinel by John Berthelsen, 14 June 11
“……..It is unlikely that the plant will go ahead before projected national elections late this year or early next, analysts say, because of the emotional impact of the waste byproducts of the plant, which contain the radioactive element thorium………
The question is whether Lynas chose Kuantan for the same reason Mitsubishi chose Bukit Merah: because Australia is a putatively first-world country that wants to export its environmental troubles overseas.
Norman Moore, the minister for mines and petroleum and the leader of the Western Australia government, told the state parliament on June 9, in response to a question from a Green Party member, that his government would refuse to take back any radioactive waste produced from the processing plant……
…The facility still faces a difficult fight, one that has grown more difficult with the Western Australian government’s announcement last week. Some 700,000 people live within a 30-km radius of the plant. A local protest group, the Kuantan Concerned Citizen Group, delivered a petition charging that the organization has no faith in the safeguards the company claims to have put in place and “We do not want to face a radioactive problem in our backyard and we do not want to subject ourselves or our family members to severe health problems.”…
..Two decades ago, Mitsubishi Chemical established a rare earth plant in an area called Bukit Merah west of the city of Ipoh in Malaysia. And for the last two decades, both Mitsubishi and Malaysia have been paying the price.
It has cost RM300 million (US$99.2 million) so far to clean up the closed plant, and the cleanup has not been completed yet. The deaths of eight plant workers from leukemia have been laid at the plant’s door because thorium, a byproduct of the refining process, was allegedly thick in the air.
Today a wholly-owned Australian company, Lynas Corp is seeking to open another rare earth plant in Malaysia near the east-coast city of Kuantan. It is reaping the results of the mess left by Mitsubishi and its subsidiary, Asian Rare Earths.
Environmentalists and Malaysia’s opposition parties, particularly the Democratic Action Party, have been warning that Lynas has the potential to create the same kind of environmental and public health problems that the workers and residents of Bukit Merah endured.
The fight over the plant has implications well beyond either Malaysia or its warring political parties in the expected run-up to an election sometime in the next year. China produces 97 percent of the world’s rare earth metals, crucial for the manufacture of a wide variety of products including wind turbines, disk drives, cell phones, flat panel displays and many others.
Now facing a rash of illegal mining and widespread environmental disasters, China said it has cut its first-half 2011 export quota by 35 percent year on year. Lynas says it will provide the first new source of supply to the world outside China, making Malaysia, if the plant goes ahead, a strategic player in the industry.
Lynas Malaysia Sdn Bhd, a subsidiary of Lynas Australia, says it plans to import rare earth ore from Mount Weld in Western Australia, said to be the richest rare earth deposit on the planet. The company plans to truck the ore to Fremantle, send it by containership to Kuantan, then process it at a RM700 million (US$231.9 million) facility which is 40 percent completed at the Gebing Industrial Estate nearby in Pahang state.
The Federation of Malaysian Consumer Associations is demanding that no thorium — a major problem at the Bukit Merah site – be stored in the country. Lynas has answered that it would seek to recycle as much of the thorium as possible although in an earlier statement it said it had permission from the government “to store it onsite, safely, forever” if its recycling plans prove not to be commercial, a fact that the Western Australia government has now made an imperative.
Lynas says it expects no delay to its plans to begin operations in September as it maintains the plant is safe despite the uncertain political situation. The company says it anticipates a windfall of RM8 billion a year from 2013 onwards from the rare earth metals it is scheduled to produce, and Kuantan authorities – not to mention the federal government in Kuala Lumpur and a world anticipating a new source of rare metals – are eager for that to happen. But they are likely to have to wait after elections first.
News 
Market Data 
Discover 
