MP SPEAKS | The government had previously imposed a ban on Lynas from importing lanthanide concentrate from Australia and disallowed the cracking and leaching (C&L) process in Malaysia after Jan 1, 2024.
The rationale was to stop the continuous accumulation of radioactive waste in Malaysia. However, there was no solution for the existing radioactive waste (approximately 1.2 million metric tonnes) that would stay forever in Malaysia, stored in permanent disposal facilities (PDF).
Thorium extraction
After the appeal to drop conditions in the license was rejected, the government was approached again with a new proposal, which was to extract thorium from the radioactive waste.
The waste is radioactive because of the existence of thorium. After thorium is extracted from the waste, it will become scheduled waste, non-radioactive.
The Science, Technology and Innovation Ministry has set up a technical team to do technological due diligence on the proposal and found it feasible.
The said technology is not something new. Previously, our scientists have extracted thorium from amang (a by-product of tin) too.
Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) and Malaysian Nuclear Agency did a research and development project and proved that thorium extraction can be done on both radioactive waste and the lanthanide concentrate (feedstock of Lynas).
Either way, it would ensure waste produced by Lynas will not be radioactive (lower than 1bq/g).
According to local laws, anything above 1bq/g is radioactive and needs to be regulated by Atomic Energy Licensing Board (AELB). The original radioactive waste of Lynas is about 6bq/g.
Bq stands for becquerel, which is a unit to measure radioactivity.
Items below 1Bq/g are not considered radioactive waste by the AELB and thus not under the purview of the Atomic Energy Licensing Act.
Why can’t they start extracting thorium now?
The research and development project by UKM is at a lab scale and Lynas needs to invest more to upscale it to industry levels.
The ministry’s technical team estimates the upscaling can be implemented by the end of 2025. Once the thorium extraction process is fully commercialised, no more radioactive waste will be produced.
Lynas will also use this technique to neutralise millions of metric tonnes of existing radioactive waste. Eventually, there will be no radioactive waste.
Therefore, this is the best option we have at the moment. This approach is also aligned with our original intention of not allowing Lynas to continuously produce and accumulate radioactive waste in Malaysia. - Mkini
CHANG LIH KANG is the MP for Tanjung Malim and science, technology and innovation minister.
The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of MMKtT.
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