The Pakatan Harapan Government Must Not Leave A Bigger Toxic Radioactive Legacy than the Previous BN Government.
On 10th July 2019, Entrepreneur Development Minister Datuk Seri Mohd Redzuan Md Yusof claimed that having an operation like Lynas in Malaysia will provide the avenue for the country to attract potentially up to RM100 billion worth of investments in the rare earth downstream sector. I’m surprised that a Pakatan Harapan Minister is now echoing the same manipulative statements of the previous BN government.
This sort of manipulative statement has been repeated many times when Mitsubishi’s joint-venture Asian Rare Earth (ARE) and Lynas were brought in.
If indeed the rare earth processing industry has such great economic potentials as vehemently claimed by Minister Mohd Redzuan, then why are other countries outside of China not taking up this opportunity, especially major rare earth materials consumers like the U.S. and Japan? Why only Malaysia? The U.S. has rich rare earth minerals deposits but yet they don’t have a rare earth refinery plant. Japan neither. And Lynas’s raw materials are shipped 5,000km all the way from Australia to Kuantan. I’m really puzzled as to why the Australian government could let an industry with such huge economic potential “escape” from their country?
Minister Mohd Redzuan also tried to impart that potentials of a rare earth downstream industry can be realized only if a rare earth refinery plant like Lynas is located in Malaysia. If this is the case, then why countries like the U.S., Japan and Germany can still have thriving downstream industries that use rare earth materials but yet do not have any rare earth refineries in their countries?
Malaysia has ARE about 30 years ago and Lynas has been around for 7 years. So, where are the rare earth downstream industries? The only thing we have is a massive TOMB to bury ARE’s radioactive waste near Bukit Merah and over 1.5 BILLION KILOGRAMS of radioactive contaminated wastes in Lynas’s backyard.
As of today, it is very obvious that Lynas intends to dump their almost 500 million kilograms of toxic radioactive wastes in our country. Malaysia won’t even accept plastic waste. Can we accept foreign radioactive waste?
Lynas has recently announced that they are relocating the cracking and leaching process back to Australia and that this plant will be ready in 5 years time. In another 5 years, Lynas’s tax holiday of 12-years would have come to an end. By then, Lynas may just pack up, take all their profits and our children will be left with an unimaginable amount of toxic radioactive waste to deal with.
Lynas’s radioactive waste contains Thorium radionuclides which has half-lives of billion of years. In other words, Lynas radioactive waste will be a permanent problem.
Malaysia is a small country and we have already lost 1km square (100 hectares) of precious land to bury ARE’s toxic radioactive waste (Please see photo 1). How many more kilometre squares of land are we going to sacrifice forever to bury Lynas’s radioactive waste? How much is Lynas going to pay for the use of our precious lands for billions of years? And how long will the radioactive waste storage structure lasts? 100 years? 300 years? Who is going to pay to rebuild the storage after it has collapsed? Who is going to pay for the management and maintenance of the dumpsite for billions of years?
As a Minister, Mohd Redzuan should exercise more responsibility. This is an issue about the health and lives of the people and our future generations. He should not pluck figures from thin air and provide misleading information.
As leaders of this country, our responsibilities are not to serve the economic interest of foreign corporations or countries nor to just satisfy the needs of the people of this generation, but more importantly, we must protect the wellbeing of our future generations.
The Pakatan Harapan government must never leave a bigger toxic radioactive legacy than the previous BN government.
WONG TACK
MP of Bentong
https://www.malaymail.com/news/money/2019/07/10/entrepreneur-minister-says-malaysias-downstream-rare-earths-potential-worth/1770046
