By Chan Chee Khoon, ScD (Epidemiology)
On June 7, 2011, in a live interview with CNN, Arnie Gundersen, a licensed nuclear power engineer with 39 years experience in managing and coordinating projects at 70 nuclear power plants in the US, noted that with the prevailing wind patterns after the Fukushima disaster’s radioactive discharges, air filter monitors in Seattle detected about half the level of “hot” (radioactive) suspended fine particulates as were detected in the air over Tokyo, 7700 km away.
Gundersen didn’t clarify what the baseline level of airborne radioactive particulates in Seattle was, pre-Fukushima, but if the measured levels in April 2011 were indeed largely blown over from Fukushima, it’s very sobering considering that Kuantan and Kemaman are within a 28 km radius of the Lynas rare earths refinery being built at Gebeng, which will be handling rare earth concentrates ground and milled into a fine powder for acid extraction at the plant.
The ARE experience from Bukit Merah in the 1980s tells us that beyond the dust-generating cracking, grinding and milling operations, powdery thorium cake waste was also spilling onto roads during transportation, during packing and unpacking, loading and unloading, and children were frequently playing in the vicinity of exposed mounds of the waste. Indeed, the thorium waste was reportedly offered to local farmers as fertiliser.
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