PETALING JAYA: Environmental activists have questioned the government’s latest licence renewal for Lynas Malaysia, saying the new conditions fail to address long-standing concerns over radioactive waste.
The groups argued that the most effective solution would have been to require the rare earth processor to relocate its cracking and leaching (C&L) operations to Australia or send all radioactive waste back there, rather than allowing further accumulation of residue in Malaysia.
Save Malaysia Stop Lynas chairman Tan Bun Teet said the government could have required Lynas to relocate its C&L process to Australia as agreed in 2018 and prevented further accumulation of the controversial Water Leach Purification (WLP) residue in Malaysia.
“There will be no need for further measures to ‘try’ to use the pretext of reducing the radioactivity of WLP to below one becquerel per gram (1Bq/g),” he said when contacted yesterday.
According to Tan, the latest condition requiring Lynas to neutralise WLP residue to below 1Bq/g by 2031 is simply a recycled claim used to justify another licence extension.
He added that the Science, Technology and Innovation Minister had first made a U-turn in 2022 when he extended Lynas’ operation by six months till end of December 2022.
“When asked about where would the WLP generated during this period be stored, he claimed the Permanent Disposal Facility (PDF) under construction then had provision for this,” Tan said.
The government had earlier said the existing PDF in Gebeng, Pahang, would house WLP residue generated before the 2031 deadline.
The Star has reached out to both the minister and Lynas but has not received any response on the matter at press time.
Tan also questioned whether Lynas had the technical expertise to extract thorium from the waste and reduce its radioactivity as it had previously suggested it had found a solution but there had been no update on it yet.
“It is difficult to believe that the government would allow radioactive waste with a half-life of billions of years to remain in the country and be monitored by future generations,” he said.
Earlier this week, the government announced that Lynas’ licence had been extended for 10 years under the Atomic Energy Licensing Act 1984, to March 2, 2036, with stricter conditions including halting WLP residue production after five years and neutralising existing waste to below regulatory limits.
Sahabat Alam Malaysia honorary secretary Mageswari Sangaralingam said the most effective option in the renewal of the Lynas licence ought to have been for all the radioactive wastes produced thus far and in future, to be sent back to Australia for management.
Referring to the earlier licence issued in 2023, Mageswari highlighted that one of the conditions imposed on Lynas was to conduct research and development (R&D).
While the R&D is to reduce the activity concentration in the WLP residue to a level below 1 Bq/g through recycling or other methods approved by the Atomic Energy Licensing Board (now Atomic Energy Department (Atom Malaysia), there is no public knowledge of exactly what is going on, she said in a statement.
“We are not at all convinced that the Lynas WLP waste produced under the current licence will no longer be radioactive or that the future waste will be removed from Malaysia once the current PDF is full,” she added.
Malaysia has been a party to the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal since Oct 8, 1993.
The convention aims to curb the dumping of toxic or hazardous waste from developed countries on developing countries including a ban on importation of hazardous wastes for recovery or final disposal purposes.
