YOURSAY | Lynas doesn’t even meet M’sian EIA reporting standard

YOURSAY | ‘Report is totally unprofessional, constitutes a bundle of prejudiced information.’

Lynas refutes claims of radionuclide contamination in water

Hopeful: “There is no significant difference in radionuclides in groundwater or fish near the plant in the company’s 10 years of operation… the RIA was part of an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA).”

Do you believe there is no groundwater contamination by Lynas based on the above report? A review of the EIA report of which the radiological impact assessment (RIA) is a component reveals some glaring fundamental flaws.

The author of the RIA report is an employee of Lynas and he is a member of the EIA study team. Another member of the team is also a service provider for Lynas.

Where is the independence of the EIA study team members? The report then is totally unprofessional and constitutes a bundle of prejudiced information that will produce a dangerous permanent disposal facility (PDF) of a mountain of radioactive waste harmful to the community.

What a sham. Lynas boasts it operates based on the highest international standards. It does not even meet the Malaysian standard in EIA reporting.

This horrible state of the country is mainly due to the lamentable behaviour of former Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak who went so low not only to corrupt himself but also the government machinery.

This is despite the communal wisdom of his fellow ministers in four ministries on Dec 10, 2012, to ship Lynas waste out for safe disposal and storage at Mt Weld Australia.

Since then, the trajectory of the country has gone south that even Vietnam is ahead of us. Let us now work together and support the new coalition government in resetting the button to head north.

Enough of Lynas!

LivelyStream: If you check the EIA, with the so-called “55 rounds of independent monitoring during nine years of Lynas Malaysia’s operation”, where is the most recent data from 2020 onwards?

There is also no data from Lynas’ final discharge area which is a peat swamp linked to an unconfined aquifer.

It also does not show the historical readings by year and only shows the minimum, maximum, and average, so there is no way to tell if the concentration of the contaminants has increased over time.

The EIA should not have been approved. An independent assessment is needed.

BlueShark1548: Our government should engage experts to check on all matters that concern pollution and how is radioactive waste treated or stored. Why can’t Lynas store the waste in Australia and why is it taking so long for the company to construct storage facilities in Australia?

This looks like another scandal in the making with so many vested interests exerting pressure on Malaysia to keep something which their own countries do not accept. The money they make, but health risks are faced by Malaysians in years to come.

When Lynas walks away, the money Malaysia has to spend to store the waste would be more than what we could possibly gain from Lynas continuing its operation here.

Lynas has been taking advantage of local politics to maintain its presence here. Such investors should not be allowed into our country. Ask them to keep their money!

Anon25: If Australia will not allow this company to store its mining byproducts in Australia, why are we allowing Lynas to do it here? A corrupt Najib allowed Lynas to stay here.

Take your rubbish back to Australia where it came from. Use the Australian desert for that permanent storage facility. Not here. If you do not like our terms just get out and stay out.

Coward: Former Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s solution dealt with the root cause and nothing else: Lynas failed to export the waste, so he said Lynas cannot generate the waste. Other activities are fine so they can continue.

The business case for running the plant under the new conditions is Lynas’, not the government’s. Former minister Yeo Bee Yin wanted to throw everything out, giving Lynas a chance to argue that decision is excessive.

If the court agrees, the compensation would be increased, and the government will have to come up with another solution. Now it has less of a free hand as there will be a court ruling hanging over it.

Everything else will remain the same given Lynas has less chance of pulling in fringe arguments, narrowing, and limiting its ability to manoeuvre. It is now forced to concentrate only on the issue of radioactive waste.

It strengthens Malaysia’s argument by saying we just reacted to the problem and the condition we imposed is precise, targeted, and crafted in such a way as to reduce the impact on Lynas.

FellowMalaysian: Australian NGO Aid/Watch has rightly pointed out Lynas’ undertaking signed in 2012 that it will remove all its radioactive waste from Malaysia.

Ten years later, the radioactive water leach purification (WLP) residue has accumulated to more than one million tons and yet it is still lying in the vicinity of Kuantan exposed to the elements of the equatorial weather.

Malayasiakini’s map showed the PDF location is near a major tributary upstream of Sungai Kuantan where the Kobat Water Intake station is situated. I fear the worse will happen if the leachate storage facilities are not built to specifications.

Yeo also pointed out that Lynas plans to run both facilities in Kuantan and Kalgoorlie to maximise profits. Based on the gargantuan amount of money Lynas invested in building the Western Australian plant which Chang Lih Kang reported as 80 percent completed yesterday, Yeo’s claim is probably right.

Scores of ministers, former ministers, and MPs have voiced their concern on Lynas’ reluctance to move their operations away from Kuantan and Lynas so far has proved to be a tough nut to crack.

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