There has been little improvement in Lynas Advanced Materials Plant’s (Lamp) waste management strategies since the publication of a scathing report in January criticising it, said the report’s author Gerhard Schidt.

Schidt quipped that he was initially worried when he was invited to speak at today’s seminar on Lynas, because he had assumed that his report would have been studied carefully and steps would have been taken to remedy deficiencies highlighted in his report .

 

NONE This would have left him standing on stage to say that “all is well,” he said.

 

“At the end my nightmare did not come true and I have to come to this conference and say that just one of the points is fine; the rest is still pending.

 

“No answers (from Lynas). No plans. No changes. Nothing has happened. It is just like we had never written the report or probably nobody has read it, and for sure, nobody took it seriously,” he said.

He added that his attempts to solicit information from the Atomic Energy Licencing Board (AELB), were also unsuccessful.

Excessive emission

The senior researcher and chemical engineer from the Germany-based Oeko Institute was speaking at a seminar this morning organised by the NGO Save Malaysia Stop Lynas, themed 'Building a safer Malaysia'.

He spent much of his presentation reiterating salient points of his report, such as excessive emission of dust and sulphuric acid gas, excessive salt content in wastewater discharged into Sungai Balok, and weaknesses in the design of Lamp's Residue Storage Facilities (RSF) holding radioactive materials that is likely to leak.

Also at the seminar was Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (Arpansa) Radiation Health Committee member Peter Karamboskos, who rubbished Lynas' plans to dilute and reuse its radioactive waste into commercial products.

NONE He said when it is added to concrete, it was found that it weakens the concrete to the extent where it was no longer useful.

As for the proposal to dilute the waste with lime to make phosphogypsum for building material, Karamboskos said the 85 percent of the world's phosphogypsum is already "stranded in huge stacks".

This is because the US and the European Union, among others, regulates it as a naturally occurring radioactive material (Norm) and bans it from being used as a building material.

The proposal to use the waste as bedding material for roadworks is also unsound, he said, because there is ample road-building material and no need to put up with the cost and infrastructure to ensure that the recycled material is safe for road workers.

He pointed out that thus far, Lynas has yet to show that there is a market for its recycled waste.

"For all intents and purposes, as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) says, water leach purification (WLP) is waste and you need a disposal facility for it," he said.

WLP is one of Lamp's three waste streams and the only one considered radioactive.