Gebeng plant a ‘time bomb’, say NGOs
By Shannon Teoh, The Malaysian Insider
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.
“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.
