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Malaysia fight against Australian company dumping radioactive waste

Crucial questions remain unanswered especially regarding the safe disposal of radioactive waste…… officials from the nuclear watchdog would be pro-nuclear and therefore fail to produce a fair assessment of the Lynas plant.

Calls for local and environmental groups to be represented in the monitoring team have also gone unheeded…’Whatever their findings, our final agenda – which is our ultimate goal – is to stop Lynas.’..

Malaysia’s new rare earth plant provokes radiation fears – Monsters and Critics, By Julia Yeow May 29, 2011,Kuala Lumpur – In the quiet town of Gebeng in Malaysia’s central state of Pahang, a new rare earth plant has evoked fears of radiation contamination as residents desperately seek to stop the construction of the world’s largest such refinery. The 700-million-ringgit (233 million dollars) refinery is being constructed by Australia’s Lynas Corp, which plans to ship rare earth ore mined from Western Australia’s Mount Weld to the Gebeng plant by September. ……

The main concern is the possibility of contamination from low-level radioactive waste from the rare earth refining process.

Gebeng is an industrial town of 10,000 people located 265 kilometres from Pahang’s capital of Kuantan…..

opponents claim crucial questions remain unanswered especially regarding the safe disposal of radioactive waste.

‘We have read the facts, we know about the risks, and we have simply decided that this is not what the people of Pahang want in our backyards,’ said Jonathan Wong, the spokesman for the Stop Lynas citizen’s movement.

‘Lynas itself has not seen the people, they have not even come up with a solid plan to manage the waste, and they expect us to just accept that they know best,’ Wong told the German Press Agency dpa.

Those opposing the Gebeng plant have pointed to the Asian Rare Earth plant built in the northern state of Perak in the 1980s by Japan’s Mitsubishi Corp as an example of the refinery being a ‘disaster in the making.’

…….Authorities eager to allay public fears said last month that the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was assessing the threat of contamination from the planned plant.

The government assured the public it would only approve the operation based on the findings of the agency’s nine-member panel scheduled to visit the proposed site on Sunday for six days.

But the move has failed to win over the critics, who claim that officials from the nuclear watchdog would be pro-nuclear and therefore fail to produce a fair assessment of the Lynas plant.

Calls for local and environmental groups to be represented in the monitoring team have also gone unheeded, critics said.

‘While it is agreed that IAEA scientists are experts in many fields, we believe their findings will be a biased report and on that ground, we reject it,’ Wong said.

‘Whatever their findings, our final agenda – which is our ultimate goal – is to stop Lynas.’..

Malaysia’s new rare earth plant provokes radiation fears – Monsters and Critics

May 30, 2011 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | ASIA, opposition to nuclear, Uranium