We are changing our header GREEN for 1 week in support of Himpunan Hijau 2.0
Today(26th February 2012) will be a historic day in Malaysia as people from many places in Malaysia as well as overseas will be holding a protest against the LYNAS LAMP plant in Malaysia. This rally is called Himpunan Hijau 2.0. Below is the schedule of Himpunan Hijau 2.0:-
We, at iPhoneMalaysiaBlog.com are fully supportive of Himpunan Hijau 2.o and are strongly against the move by the Malaysian government to allow the production of Rare Earth in Malaysia especially looking at the damages that have been done by the Asian Rare Earth in Bukit Merah. We have written an article on this dated back on 3rd August, 2011 titled Save Malaysia Stop Lynas. We are more determined that ever to put a stop to this nonsense especially after the Atomic Energy Licensing Board(AELB) has recently approved a temporary operating license(TOL) to Lynas to operate the plant on 30th January 2012. The biggest joke is that the approval for the TOL was given 4 days after probably more than a thousand comments have been submitted by the public to voice their concern about this project.
How can AELB suddenly become so “efficient” to go thru all the points and comments from the member of the public(in a matter of days) and eventually come to the conclusion to award the TOL to Lynas? Or is it that the decision has been made even with or without consideration of the views of the members of the public?
In addition to that, there are a couple more points that are highly inconsistent in our opinion that we would like to highlight here:-
1. In the report, Lynas is to provide a plan if they can properly recycle the waste or in the worst case scenario find a Permanent Disposal Facility(PDF). If Lynas does not even have a detailed plan for this or identified the PDF, why is AELB so “hasty” to approve the TOL to them. We are talking about highly toxic waste here that can harm many industries and the people that are living around or at the vicinity of the plant. Even if we were to give them the benefit of doubt that they do put up a proper PDF(which we highly doubt). Have we ever considered the dangers of natural disasters like tsunamis or earthquakes that could still happen in the future. If high tech country like Japan which has taken supposedly very high standards of precautions is not able to contain the radioactive leakages from their nuclear power plants due to natural disasters like tsunamis and earthquakes, who are we to rule this point out in Malaysia.
2. Lynas will have to pay the first installment of the US$50 Million deposit to the government as well as pay for the appointment of an independent 3rd party assessor appointed by AELB to check on Lynas. Let us bring back a case in history of the Asian Rare Earth plant in Bukit Merah as a comparison. The plant was closed down because of having many complaints about the high birth defect rates and cases of Leukemia for the residents around the place. And do we know what is the total clean up cost…..US$100Million and that was in 1994(according to the chronology of events posted at Consumer.org.my). That was about 18 years ago and factoring in the “real” inflation rate in Malaysia what can this US$50 Million deposit to the government really do considering the Lynas plant is going to be 10 times bigger than the Asian Rare Earth plant in Bukit Merah. Let us do some simple calculations here using the future value of money with compounding interest to find out how much should US$100 Million in 1994 worth today using the formula below.
PV – Present Value (Should be US$100Million since this is the reference which we have for Asian Rare Earth)
i – Interest ( This should really be the inflation rate. Say we take a very conservative figure of 5% inflation rate per year for the purpose of this calculation)
t – Compounding period in years (This is the period of time from 1994 to 2012 which is approximately 18 years)
So, using the formula, US$100Million in 1994 has the same value as US$240.66 Million today based on an inflation rate of only 5% per annum. Since Lynas plant is about 10 times the size of the Asian Rare Earth Plant in Bukit Merah, shouldn’t the deposit be at least 10 times as well? Meaning the reasonable deposit should be a whopping US$2.4Billion.
The above is just for illustration purpose only. The true fact is even if Lynas puts up US$2.4Billion, is it really enough for the people who may potentially suffer from cancer, birth defects etc from the exposure to the hazards posed by this plant? Can our lives and the lives of our family and friends be equated to just dollars and cents.
That is why this is really a no brainer for all Malaysians. Malaysians are not stupid and we will stand up and be united against Lynas until Lynas leave Malaysia. The message is crystal clear. There is simply no other alternative to this. Together we can fight this battle and win. United we stand and we urge all our fellow Malaysians to join in this quest.
As the bloggers of iPhoneMalaysiaBlog.com, we will change our header GREEN for 1 week in support of Himpunan Hijau 2.0 in our quest to fight against Lynas. This is the very least we can do. To the Himpunan Hijau 2.0 committee and Save Malaysia Stop Lynas team and the many other Stop Lynas alliances who have been very hardworking and putting in tremendous efforts, our hats off to you folks! Thank You for leading the fight against Lynas! Thank You for making a difference to the future generations of Malaysia. We really appreciate it!
















