KUALA LUMPUR: Lynas Corporation, which is building a controversial (1) rare earth processing plant in the (2) Gebeng industrial area, said people had the right to query it over the project.
Nicholas Curtis, executive chairman of the Australian company, maintained that the project was entirely safe.
“We are transparent about our operations and people can ask us any question,” he said.
Lynas has invested up to (3) RM700mil in the project and the plant, located in the Gebeng chemical and petrochemical hub, is expected to be operational in September.
The residents are mainly concerned over one of the proposed plant's waste products, (4) iron phospho gypsum, which contains naturally occuring low-level radioactive thorium.
The firm has said that it would place these residues in safe, reliable (5) engineered storage cells.
“I find the comments that we are here to damage the next generation of Malaysian children as offensive and upsetting to me. It's just not true,” Curtis said.
He said the project was sought-after elsewhere but Malaysia was the preferred destination due to its (6) excellent infrastructure and (7) skilled workforce.
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(1) - set of 17 chemical elements in the periodic table, specifically the 15 lanthanoids plus scandium and yttrium, naturally occurring and relatively very plentiful in the Earth's crust as ore deposits; the application ranges from LCDs, compact fluorescent light, wind turbine magnets and hybrid vehicles
(2) - houses world-class chemical and petrochemical industrial zone with 4 development phases totalling 8,600 hectares of land strategically located only 5 km from Kuantan Port
(3) - is also equivalent to the amount of PTPTN loan defaulters debt burden in 2008
(4) - proposed applications for this material among others are road pavement, soil conditioner, cover for landfills, roof tiles and artificial reef and oyster bed
(5) - usually achieved by shielding during handling and transport before being compacted, incinerated or shallow land burial
(6) - Kuantan Port equipped with 19 multi-type berths (maximum of 725 metres) which can cater up to 40,000 tonnes deadweight vessel with 11 metres of draft, and East Coast Expressway which connects Kuala Lumpur to Jabor (Pahang - Terengganu border) through Kuantan stretching 160 km of free-flow four-lane dual carriage expressway
(7) - as of January 2011, total Malaysian unemployed are 421,800 which is 3.4% of total labour force with 64.7% labour force participation rate (15-64 years of age) and high concentration focus in manufacturing industry
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