Environmental group Save Malaysia Stop Lynas (SMSL) has urged the monitoring committee on Lynas’ rare earth refinery in Gebeng, Pahang, to question the company on its method in recycling radioactive waste.
 
SMSL spokesperson Tan Bun Teet today said that Lynas’ commercial application for the waste as a road base to lower its radioactivity down to one becquerel per gram, is questionable and unreliable.
 
He said they wanted the monitoring committee ask Lynas how would it overcome the problem of mixing it to dilute the waste.
 
“Before you can mix it with any other material to make into a synthetic product like road base, you have to dry it first because this waste is produced in a very moist form. The drying cost itself will kill you, there’s no way you can actually dilute it,” said Tan (right in photo).
 
He was with over 30 SMSL members to hand a memorandum to the monitoring committee at the Matrade Exhibition and Convention Centre, Kuala Lumpur today.
 
The committee, headed by Malaysian Institute of Chemistry president Dr Soon Ting Kueh, will reportedly have their last meeting today before filing a report to the Science, Technology and Innovation Ministry for a final discussion to consider Lynas’ application for a permanent operating license (POL).
 
“Lynas claims that they can recycle the radioactive waste called the water leach purification (WLP) waste… they don’t call it waste, they call it residue which has radioactivity of 6.24 becquerel per gram.
 
“They said they are going to bring it down to the level that can be regarded as non-radioactive, that is below 1 becquerel per gram. That means the dilution is six times,” Tan said.
 
It was revealed last year that Lynas generates three types of residues – water leach purification (WLP), flue gas sulphurisation and neutralisation underflow, whereby the WLP was the only residue that contains radioactive over six becquerel per gram.
 
Last September, Lynas Malaysia Sdn Bhd claimed it had found a commercial application for the WLP as a road base.
 
"We have submitted the plan to the government and we are now awaiting approval," vice-president and managing director Mashal Ahmad (right) was reported as saying.

Meanwhile SMSL will hand copies of their memorandum to Atomic Energy Licensing Board (AELB) and Department of Environment (DOE) today in an effort to urge the authorities from renewing Lynas’ operating license.
 
Lynas’ Advanced Materials Plant (Lamp) is currently operating on a two-year temporary operating license (TOL), which Tan says expires on September 2 this year.
 
“We believe that it (Lynas) has got to face the reality that it does not have enough funds in the near future to go on,” Tan added.