MALAYSIA must insist that Australia accepts the radioactive waste from Lynas Corp’s rare earth processing plant in Kuantan, said Kuantan MP Fuziah Salleh.

“The lesson to be learnt is that Australia has shortchanged Malaysia in the name of investment. 

“Should the situation arise where there is no solution for the present waste as well as for the future water- leached purification (WLP) waste to be generated, then our country will have no choice but to not renew the operating license.”

Fuziah was commenting on a report in the Australian Financial Review that said Western Australia’s Mines and Petroleum Minister Bill Johnston will not accept refuse waste from the Lynas plant in Malaysia.

Johnston’s statement precedes a June 20 meeting between him and Energy, Science, Technology, Environment and Climate Minister Yeo Bee Yin in Perth. The Malaysian envoy intends to press the Australian state to take back waste byproducts from the processing of rare earths that were mined there.

Under Australian law, the federal minister and state minister have power to grant permits for waste to be shipped back to the country.

Yeo is to pursue the matter with Australia following Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s announcement recently that Putrajaya had decided in principle to renew Lynas’ operating licence which expires in September because it involved a large investment.

Yeo has been adamant that Lynas must remove and ship back waste stockpiles to Australia as a precondition to licence renewal, which Australia has consistently rejected.

Fuziah said that the waste could not be recycled nor should it be spread out over several locations as suggested by Dr Mahathir as the alternative should Australia refuse to take it back.

“Even though it is low-level radiation waste, it has a very long life. The half-life of thorium in the WLP is 14 billion years. 

“The best practice is to send it back to the mine. This is the pre-condition set by Yeo on the renewal of the licence.”

She said that the WLP waste generated should have been stored in a permanent disposal facility (PDF) but was not. The Lynas plant began operations in late 2012 and has since  stockpiled some 450,000 tonnes of waste on site.

In recent months, the Australian company said it had plans to build a PDF for low-level radioactive waste which would also be located in Pahang.

It is also reportedly planning to build a cracking and leaching plant, either at its Mount Weld mine or on the outskirts of Kalgoorlie in Western Australia’s Goldfields region, to remove radioactivity before rare earths are shipped to Kuantan for downstream processing. – June 6, 2019.