People’s interests are still at stake
Star Editorial
THE International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will help review safety aspects of the proposed Lynas rare earth plant near Kuantan, so the issue is supposed to be moving ahead.
Residents in the area, however, remain unimpressed. Unlike any national or international agency, they have to live in the vicinity or move and see their property values drop.
They want a balanced representation on the review panel scheduled to start work in a fortnight. So far there are still no representatives from environmentalists or victims of Bukit Merah’s rare earth tragedy in Perak.
The IAEA adds an international dimension to matters, although how or if it would remedy problems is unclear. Since it was set up in 1957 to promote nuclear power around the world, it is not a neutral party in the nuclear debate.
However, an apolitical People’s Green Coalition has now taken root. It is rightly non-partisan, but it could still endorse any individual or group supporting its aims while vying for public office. Meanwhile, there is another international dimension feeding into Malaysia’s nuclear debate: Japan.
Asia’s most industrialised nation has undergone two of its most harrowing experiences in history, both of them nuclear: wartime destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by nuclear bombs, and peacetime crisis at Fukushima after the destructive March 11 tsunami.
It is ironic that the IAEA director-general is Yukiya Amano, a former Japanese diplomat. It may seem fitting but his position embodies the IAEA’s inability to act meaningfully in times of crisis.
The IAEA is powerless to mitigate radioactive fallout from the Fukushima Daiichi plant, or do much about the vulnerability of the Hamaoka plant in central Japan, the radiation leak at the Tsuruga plant in the west, the leak at the Onagawa plant in the east or indeed renewed leakage of radioactive water at Fukushima from Friday.
Japan’s nuclear plants had been built to the best specifications of the time – yet to no avail. The Tsuruga, Hamaoka, Onagawa and Fukushima plants all conform to ISO 14001.
The moral lesson here is that international regimes can only do so much and no more. It is local people who have to live with the consequences, so individual governments must not shirk their responsibilities in prioritising the people’s health, safety, welfare and peace of mind.
