This is the article made by a reporter from New York, Keith Bradcher on March 2011 that came to Kuantan to see by herself reagarding the rare-earth project. Surprisingly the project had started few years back but only now become the focus of media attention. The project being planned to start their operation this September, and if no action being made our life might be in danger !
KUANTAN, Malaysia — A colossal construction project here could help determine whether the world can break China’s chokehold on the strategic metals crucial to products as diverse as Apple’s iPhone,Toyota’s Prius and Boeing’s smart bombs.
As many as 2,500 construction workers will soon be racing to finish the world’s largest refinery for so-called rare earth metals — the first rare earth ore processing plant to be built outside China in nearly three decades.
For Malaysia and the world’s most advanced technology companies, the plant is a gamble that the processing can be done safely enough to make the local environmental risks worth the promised global rewards.
Once little known outside chemistry circles, rare earth metals have become increasingly vital to high-tech manufacturing. 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.
So the world has largely left the dirty work to Chinese refineries — processing factories that are barely regulated and in some cases illegally operated, and have created vast toxic waste sites.
But other countries’ wariness has meant that China now mines and refines at least 95 percent of the global supply of rare earths. And Beijing has aroused international alarm by wielding that virtual monopoly as a global trade weapon.
Last September, for example, China imposed a two-month embargo on rare earth shipments to Japan during a territorial dispute, and for a short time even blocked some shipments to the United States and Europe. Beijing’s behavior, which has also included lowering the export limit on its rare earths, has helped propel world prices of the material to record highs — and sent industrial countries scrambling for alternatives.
Even now, though, countries with their own rare earth ore deposits are not always eager to play host to the refineries that process them. An American company, Molycorp, plans to reopen an abandoned mine near Death Valley in California; but Molycorp must completely rebuild the adjacent refinery to address environmental concerns.
All of this helps explain why a giant Australian mining company, Lynas, is hurrying to finish a $230 million rare earth refinery here, on the northern outskirts of Malaysia’s industrial port of Kuantan. The plant will refine slightly radioactive ore from the Mount Weld mine deep in the Australian desert, 2,500 miles away. The ore will be trucked to the Australian port of Fremantle and transported by container ship from there.
Within two years, Lynas says, the refinery will be able to meet nearly a third of the world’s demand for rare earth materials — not counting China, which has its own abundant supplies.
Nicholas Curtis, Lynas’s executive chairman, said it would cost four times as much to build and operate such a refinery in Australia, which has much higher labor and construction costs. Australia is also home to an environmentally minded and politically powerful Green party.
Despite the potential hazards, the Malaysian government was eager for investment by Lynas, even offering a 12-year tax holiday. If rare earth prices stay at current lofty levels, the refinery will generate $1.7 billion a year in exports starting late next year, equal to nearly 1 percent of the entire Malaysian economy.
Raja Dato Abdul Aziz bin Raja Adnan, the director general of the Malaysian Atomic Energy Licensing Board, said his country approved the Lynas project only after an interagency review indicated the imported ore and subsequent waste would have low enough levels of radioactivity to be manageable and safe.
Malaysia had reason to be cautious: Its last rare earth refinery, operated by the Japanese company Mitsubishi Chemical, is now one of Asia’s largest radioactive waste cleanup sites.
“We have learned we shouldn’t give anybody a free hand,” Raja Adnan said.
Despite such assurances, critics are not convinced that the low-level radioactive materials at the Lynas project will be safe.
“The word ‘low’ here is just a matter of perception — it’s a carcinogen,” said Dr. Jayabalan A. Thambyappa, a general practitioner physician and toxicologist. He has treated leukemia victims whose illnesses he and others have attributed to the old Mitsubishi Chemical refinery.
That plant, on the other side of the Malay peninsula, closed in 1992 after years of sometimes violent demonstrations by citizens protesting its polluting effects. Now, in an engineering effort that has largely escaped the outside world’s notice, Mitsubishi is engaged in a $100 million cleanup.
No comments:
Post a Comment