http://malaysiakini.com/news/158170
Pekan industri Gebeng berhampiran Kuantan bakal menyaksikan pusat pemprosesan tanah jarang (rare earth) yang paling besar di dunia, menurut laporan akhbar harian Amerika, the New York Times (NYT).
Menurut beberapa pakar yang dipetik dalam laporan itu, kebimbangan mula timbul berhubung sisa radioaktif yang bakal dihasilkan selepas projek itu beroperasi.
Pusat penapiasan bernilai RM700 juta itu sedang dibina oleh syarikat Australia, Lynas Corp. Mereka akan menghantar tanah jarang yang dilombong di barat negara itu di Mount Weld dengan kapal.
Ini adalah percubaan kedua Malaysia dalam penapisan tanah jarang, kali pertama menimbulkan kontroversi dan bantahan apabila ia cuba didirikan di Bukit Merah, Perak pada sekitar 1980an.
NYT memetik pengarah Lembaga Perlesenan Tenaga Atom Malaysia, Raja Abdul Aziz Raja Adnan sebagai berkata kelulusan diberikan kepada projek Lynas selepas melalui penilaian oleh pelbagai agensi kerajaan.
Katanya, bijih yang diimport dan sisa tanah itu akan mempunyai tahap radiasi yang rendah dan mampu dikendalikan dengan selamat.
“Kami telah mempunyai pengalaman dan tiada sesiapa yang akan diberikan sebarang kebebasan,” kata Raja Adnan yang merujuk kepada Bukit Merah.
Namun bagi seorang pengamal perubatan dan ahli toksilogi, Dr Jayabalan A Thambyappa, yang pernah merawat beberapa pesakit di Bukit Merah, beliau kurang yakin dengan kenyataan itu.
“Perkataan 'rendah' adalah semata-mata persepsi - ia adalah karsinogen,” katanya kepada NYT.
Di sebalik kebimbangan itu, kerajaan Malaysia cukup cenderung agar pusat pemprsosesan Lynas itu dibina dan telah menawarkan taraf perintis selama 12 tahun.
Another Bad Decision Oleh Kerajaan... Kesian Penduduk Kuantan
- Kilang yang akan dibina di Kuantan akan menghasilkan logam bernilai lebih 5 billion setahun
- tetapi di sebalik keuntungan besar ini, kesan kepada alam sekitar sangatlah teruk (berdasarkan kes Mitsubishi Chemical 20 tahun lepas)
- penduduk yang tinggal berhampiran kilang juga terdedah kepada ancaman leukimia
- harap kerajaan fikirkan nasib rakyat terlebih dahulu ...
- yang menghairankan... bagaimana sebuah company dari Australia sanggup datang melabur membina kilang di Malaysia dan membawa bahan mentah dari Australia ke Malaysia untuk diproses di Malaysia .. Australia kan ke negara besar... banyak tanah kosong lagi untuk membina kilang... Jawapannya kerana penduduk Australia tidak mahu menggadaikannya nyawa mereka kepada pelbagai masalah kesihatan lanjutan pembinaaan kilang ini (barah , leukimia)
- harap kerajaan pertimbangkan semula pelaburan dari company Australia ini ...
Twenty years on, Malaysia makes another rare earth bet
By Shannon Teoh
March 09, 2011
KUALA LUMPUR, March 9 — Malaysia is gambling on a new processing plant in Kuantan to produce metals possibly worth over RM5 billion a year, nearly two decades after protests forced Mitsubishi Chemicals to close down a rare earth plant near Ipoh due to environmental damage — damage which it is still trying to clean up today.
A New York Times (NYT) report said today Australian mining company Lynas’s refinery in Kuantan could break China’s chokehold on rare earth metals that are crucial to high technology products such as Apple’s iPhone, the Toyota Prius and Boeing’s smart bombs, said the newspaper.
“If rare earth prices stay at current lofty levels, the refinery will generate US$1.7 billion (RM5 billion) a year in exports starting late next year, equal to nearly one per cent of the entire Malaysian economy,” the newspaper said.
“But as Malaysia learned the hard way a few decades ago, refining rare earth ore usually leaves thousands of tons of low-level radioactive waste behind,” it added, referring to a plant in Bukit Merah.
The Bukit Merah Asian Rare Earth plant near Ipoh was also reported by the New York Times to be still quietly undergoing a US$100 million cleanup exercise despite shutting down in 1992.
The New York Times reported that as many as 2,500 workers are rushing to complete a US$230 million plant in Gebeng, near Kuantan, that will refine slightly radioactive ore from Australia.
It said it will be the first such plant outside China in nearly three decades as the rest of the world became wary of the environmental hazards, leaving China to control 95 per cent of global supply of the rare metals.
Beijing’s recent moves to limit exports of rare earth has propelled world prices of the material to record highs, sending industrial countries scrambling for alternatives, the report continued.
This has spurred Australian mining company Lynas to rush the refinery, which it says will meet nearly a third of the world’s demand for rare earth materials.
According to the NYT, the Malaysian government was eager for the investment by Lynas, even offering a 12-year tax holiday.
It quoted Raja Datuk Abdul Aziz bin Raja Adnan, the director-general of the Malaysian Atomic Energy Licensing Board, who said the project was only approved after an inter-agency review.
He said the report indicated that the imported ore and subsequent waste would have low enough levels of radioactivity to be manageable and safe.
“We have learned we shouldn’t give anybody a free hand,” Raja Adnan told the newspaper.
However, toxicologist Dr. Jayabalan A. Thambyappa, who has treated leukaemia victims whose illnesses he and others have attributed to the Mitsubishi plant, contends that low or not, exposure to such material remains hazardous.
“The word ‘low’ here is just a matter of perception — it’s a carcinogen,” said Dr Jayabalan.
The Bukit Merah plant was opened by Japanese company Mitsubishi Chemicals in 1985, before being shuttered in 1992 following years of protests by residents concerned with pollution, the NYT said.
Rare earths, a group of 17 elements found near the bottom of the periodic table, are not radioactive themselves.
But virtually every rare earth ore deposit around the world contains, in varying concentrations, a slightly radioactive element called thorium.
In Bukit Merah, Mitsubishi seeks to undo old harms
KUALA LUMPUR, March 9 — Nearly two decades after shutting down, a rare earth plant in Bukit Merah near Ipoh is now the site of the largest radiation cleanup in the lucrative industry, the New York Times (NYT) reported yesterday.
According to the report, Mitsubishi Chemical is spending US$100 million (RM303 million) to decontaminate the site despite having no legal compulsion to do so.
Previously, nearby residents had blamed the rare earth refiner for birth defects and eight leukaemia cases within five years in a community of 11,000 — after many years with no leukaemia cases. Seven of the leukaemia victims have since died.
Mitsubishi Chemical also reached an out-of-court settlement with residents there by agreeing to donate US$164,000 to the community’s schools, but denies any responsibility for illnesses.
In the current cleanup operation, workers in protective gear have already removed 11,000 truckloads of radioactive material, hauling away every trace of the old refinery and even tainted soil from beneath it — down to the bedrock as much as 25 feet below, said Anthony Goh, the consultant overseeing the project for one of Mitsubishi’s contractors, GeoSyntec, an Atlanta-based firm.
To dispose of the radioactive material, engineers have cut the top off a hill in a forest reserve nearly five kilometres away, buried the material inside the hill’s core, and then entombed it under more than 20 feet of clay and granite.
The NYT reported that the toughest part of the Bukit Merah cleanup is yet to come, when robots and workers in protective gear will start trying to move more than 80,000 steel barrels of radioactive waste from a concrete bunker. They will mix it with cement and gypsum, and then permanently store it in the hilltop repository.
Osamu Shimizu, the director of Asian Rare Earth, the Mitsubishi Chemical subsidiary that owns the mine, declined to discuss details of the factory’s operation before it closed in 1992. But he told the NYT that the company was committed to a safe and complete cleanup.
Image-burnishing was important because the firm is part of the Mitsubishi Group of Companies, which has long made Malaysia the cornerstone of its Southeast Asian operations. The group has dominant positions in manufacturing a range of products, including air-conditioners and cars, the newspaper reported.
According to the NYT, the company and Malaysian regulators said it was statistically possible that the leukaemia cases were a coincidence because tin mining towns tend to have above-average levels of background radiation.
But an academic study of another tin mining town suggested that communities of Bukit Merah’s size should only have one leukaemia case every 30 years.
Lai Kwan, 69, still recalls how she cheerfully moved in the 1980s from a sawmill job to a better-paying position in the refinery that involved proximity to radioactive materials. She remembers that while pregnant, she was told to take an unpaid day off only on days when the factory bosses said that a particularly dangerous consignment of ore had arrived.
She has spent the last 29 years washing, dressing, feeding and otherwise taking care of her son from that pregnancy, who was born with severe mental and physical disabilities. She and other local residents blame the refinery for the problems, although birth defects can have many causes.
“We saw it as a chance to get better pay,” Lai recalled to the New York Times. “We didn’t know what they were producing.”
kalu nk buat....musti wat kat gebeng,,,,hutan belantara tu,,kawasan industri.......
tp khennnnn,,loji nuklear kata bulih buat,takkan benda2 camni tak nak buat?
Kenapalah kita selalu kejor kemajuan ? alam sekitar lebih penting. pada aku kemajuan tak ada erti tanpa alam sekitar. tolak terus lah. buat apa pertimbangkan. tolak terus.
Tapi aku jamin, kerajaan takkan pertimbangkan pun, musti terus amik dek kerana untung yg nampak bakal masuk poket masing masing. bukan pasal rakyat. tapi pasal alam sekitar yang akan terancam dek kerana perangai jahanam manusia yang memerintah.
Kalau kerajaan amik berat pasal alam sekitar ni, tak timbul langsung pasal nak bina kilang bagai. dah tentu kerajaan reject awal awal lagi kerana memikirkan pasal alam sekitar. tapi kerajaan pikir duit first. pastu rakyat bising2 baru la terhegeh hegeh pikir pasal alam sekitar bagai.
Post time 10-3-2011 06:50 PM
Menurut beberapa pakar yang dipetik dalam laporan itu, kebimbangan mula timbul berhubung sisa radioaktif yang bakal dihasilkan selepas projek itu beroperasi.
NYT memetik pengarah Lembaga Perlesenan Tenaga Atom Malaysia, Raja Abdul Aziz Raja Adnan sebagai berkata kelulusan diberikan kepada projek Lynas selepas melalui penilaian oleh pelbagai agensi kerajaan.
Namun bagi seorang pengamal perubatan dan ahli toksilogi, Dr Jayabalan A Thambyappa, yang pernah merawat beberapa pesakit di Bukit Merah, beliau kurang yakin dengan kenyataan itu.
变色卡
......malas
