Gebeng plant a ‘time bomb’, say NGOs

By Shannon Teoh

Construction work at the Lynas Advanced Materials Plant (LAMP) in Gebeng. — Pictures by Choo Choy May

KUALA LUMPUR, March 20 — Environmental groups renewed calls this week to stop work on the RM700 million rare earth plant in Gebeng, Kuantan. Against the backdrop of the on-going nuclear plant crisis in Japan which was triggered by the huge earthquake last week, the NGOs said that the refinery will generate radioactive waste that “brings back memories of Bukit Merah,” where a rare earth plant set up in the 1980s has been linked to at least eight leukaemia cases, seven resulting in death.
“As we are observing now in Japan, the waste is a sitting time bomb,” said Environmental Protection Society of Malaysia (EPSM) president Nithi Nesadurai.
Local residents who formed Kuantan Environmental Watch Group (KEWG), an umbrella body for community stakeholders in the Pahang capital, have begun distributing articles and pictures of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant as a warning to fellow residents of the possible disaster.

Signboard indicating the construction of an access road to the Lynas Advanced Materials Plant (LAMP).

“If Japan, which is known for its safety record and technology, can’t avert disaster, how about us with our inexperience?” spokesman Jonathan Wong said. The massive earthquake in Japan last Friday and the resulting explosions at nuclear power plants have fuelled fears about the plant in Malaysia’s east coast which faces the Pacific Rim’s ring of fire.
The 9.0-magnitude earthquake sent a 10-metre-high tsunami surging into cities and villages, sweeping away everything in its path.
Australian mining company Lynas Corporation has insisted that the rare earth ore to be refined in Gebeng has only two per cent of the radioactive element thorium that was present in the raw material used in Bukit Merah.
The Bukit Merah plant, set up in 1985, was also subject to sustained protests by local residents. It is still undergoing a massive cleanup operation that will cost RM300 million, nearly two decades after the plant was shut down.
But Lynas has already begun construction of the rare earth refinery in Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s home state of Pahang where the opposition Pakatan Rakyat (PR) is planning to drum up the issue ahead of a general election expected to take place within the year.
Lynas expects to begin refining the rare earth metals, used in such high-technology products as smartphones, hybrid cars and even bombs, by the end of next year in an operation that may be worth over RM5 billion in the first year, increasing to RM8 billion in the next.

Signboard indicating the Lynas Advanced Materials Plant (LAMP) construction site and office.

Last week, Lynas told The Malaysian Insider that it is planning to reprocess the waste into a cement mixture for road-building with approved levels of thorium, although it has not finalised details. However, the environmentalists contacted were unanimous in their demand that work be halted until all issues had been addressed, expressing a lack of confidence that the government would have the political will to withhold approval should the plant not meet safety standards.
“After Lynas has spent RM700 million to build the plant, is the government really going to say no? We are very cautious of any assurance being given as we’re heard it all before when the Asian Rare Earth plant was being built in Bukit Merah,” Nithi said.
“We have heard no solution at all to dealing with the waste. We want to know what it is before Lynas starts operations, not just assurances that they will manage it,” Wong, a founding member of KEWG, told The Malaysian Insider.
He claimed that since the project was first mooted in 2007, Lynas has only met the residents once in late 2008 and did not respond at all to the question of waste disposal.
Malaysian Nature Society communications head Andrew Sebastian said it had sent Lynas a letter expressing its concerns and questions after the 2008 meeting.
“Our only comment is that we received no answer and we continue to have the same doubts,” he said, referring to various concerns including waste disposal and radiation released in the refining process.
Dr Jayabalan A. Thambyappa, who treated radiation victims linked to the Bukit Merah rare earth plant, also said that the public briefing did not address waste disposal.
The toxicologist told The Malaysian Insider that NGOs such as the Consumer Association of Penang and Sahabat Alam Malaysia, of which he is a member, have and will continue to oppose to refinery.

Another view of the site of the Lynas Advanced Materials Plant (LAMP).