Atlas of Contaminated Sites

Notable case, Bukit Merah, near Ipoh, Perak (Kinta), Malaysia

Bukit Merah, former Asian Rare Earth plant

Bukit Merah

At Bukit Merah, near Ipoh, Asian Rare Earth extracted yttrium from monazite from 1982 to 1992, producing radioactive thorium hydroxide residue beside a village. Closure came after a long court case brought by residents; removing the waste and building the repository took until 2015.

Status
Contained
Activity
1982–1992
Media
soil
Kind of site
chemical works, nuclear, industrial waste
  1. Area. No area given in the sources consulted. The Kledang repository has a 200 m exclusion zone and a buffer zone of 500 m radius, decided in April 2014; the regulator had asked for 1.7 km (The Malaysian Insight, 2019).

Contaminants

Radionuclides

Status

Contained

The factory site was decommissioned between 2003 and October 2005 and the waste is sealed in the Kledang long-term storage facility, declared closed on 21 February 2015. According to the state body MB Inc the area is 'clean based on regulatory requirements'; the factory site was last officially checked in 2006 and, according to The Malaysian Insight (2019), Japanese experts found levels still high in 2017. Everything in this record comes from the press: no official document was opened.

Story

Asian Rare Earth Sdn Bhd (ARE) was a joint venture between Japan's Mitsubishi Chemical Industries, Beh Minerals, the Tabung Haji fund and other Malaysian partners. It began operating in July 1982 in the Bukit Merah industrial area, extracting yttrium from monazite. Cracking the mineral with caustic soda leaves thorium hydroxide as a by-product. The village of Kampung Bukit Merah lies about 100 metres from the former factory.

Residents reported birth defects and leukaemia cases and took the company to court. The plant closed in 1992, after a 32-month legal battle and under local and international pressure. A long-term storage facility had been completed at Kledang in September 1988 and received its first waste the following year.

Decommissioning of the site, between 2003 and October 2005, included demolishing the buildings, excavating contaminated soil and building the repository's first engineered cell. From 2010 the drums were retrieved, emptied and their contents solidified in a second cell; work ended on 19 November 2014. The final inventory lists about 50,000 drums of thorium hydroxide residue and 37,000 of contaminated materials. The repository belongs to the state of Perak, and the Atomic Energy Licensing Board (AELB) carries out verification sampling there.

Timeline

  1. 1982July: Asian Rare Earth starts the plant.
  2. 1988September: the Kledang long-term storage facility is completed.
  3. 1992The plant closes after a 32-month court case.
  4. 2003Decommissioning of the site begins, ending in October 2005.
  5. 2010Final disposal of the drums in the repository begins.
  6. 201521 February: the repository is declared closed.

Health

The Malaysian Insight (2019) reports that two years after the plant started residents noticed birth defects in newborns and that at least eight leukaemia cases were confirmed; a commentary in the same outlet also mentions at least ten children with brain cancer and elevated lead in children. These are press figures: no published epidemiological study was opened.

Remediation

  1. 2003excavationDemolition of the buildings, excavation of contaminated soil and restoration of the site for industrial use (2003–2005).
  2. 2014engineered containmentRetrieval of the drums, solidification of the contents and sealing in two engineered cells at the Kledang repository (2010–2014).

From the literature

Species that acted on one of this site's contaminants in at least one study. The list is automatic and takes no account of this site's soil, concentrations or climate.

Fungi

Sources

  1. Bukit Merah radioactive waste safely buried, says Perak, The Malaysian Insight, 2019
  2. Why Bukit Merah folk need reassurance (commentary), The Malaysian Insight, 2019
  3. Bukit Merah, Perak (coordinates), Wikipedia, 2026

Draft compiled from public sources, not yet reviewed.