Australia Approved That It Is All About Politics

They make your iPod work, your hybrid car run and keep the X-ray machine at the hospital humming. But few outside the mining industry know much about the group of metals collectively known as rare earths.

That may be about to change thanks to a hole in the ground 1000km north-east of Perth at the centre of a simmering environmental row.

In one corner is the Sydney mining company, Lynas Corp, whose Mt Weld rare earths mine near Laverton has been cleared by the WA Government's environmental and health watchdogs.

In the other are a handful of activist groups and Fremantle MP Adele Carles, who have raised concerns about radiation and whether rare earths are safe to be exported out of Fremantle. This weekend one of those groups, Save Malaysia, Stop Lynas, hopes to rally supporters at meetings in Perth, Sydney, Melbourne and Malaysia, where Lynas' rare earths concentrate will be sent for further processing.

Millions of dollars are at stake for investors in Lynas, a $1.5 billion company, and for WA in State royalties.

What nobody disputes is that Mt Weld is one of the world's richest sources of rare earths - the name given to 17 chemically similar elements used most commonly in the electronics industry. That makes it a potentially extremely lucrative mine because prices have rocketed.

Lynas has stockpiled rare earths at a storage facility in Bibra Lake ready for export. All it needs is a crucial licence to turn on its plant in Malaysia, where the project has become a political issue because of the country's chequered history with the industry.

Malaysia's last rare earths refinery at Bukit Merah was closed in the 1990s amid protests and claims it caused birth defects and leukaemia in nearby residents. But there are big differences between the material Lynas is mining and that used at Bukit Merah - most significantly much lower levels of thorium, which is the reason Lynas' raw material is classified non-toxic and non-hazardous.

Ms Carles waded into the argument recently by calling for radiation monitoring results from the Bibra Lake stockpiles to be made public. She has also suggested Lynas should export out of South Australia or the Northern Territory instead of Fremantle.

"I'm very concerned about many aspects of this proposal - the secrecy around it being one of my primary concerns," she said.

Lynas argues its plans have been scrutinised at both ends - in WA by the Department of Environment and the Department of Health and in Malaysia by the Malaysian Government and the International Atomic Energy Agency.

"Transporting concentrate from the Mt Weld mine site to Fremantle port, and on to Malaysia is safe and does not present a radiation risk to public health or the environment," a Lynas spokesman said. "Attempts to characterise it otherwise are either unintentionally or deliberately misleading.

"A person who spent several hours on a long-haul commercial airline flight or having a picnic near granite outcrops in the hills around Perth will receive a higher dose of radiation exposure than during the same time in the relative vicinity of the Lynas rare earths concentrate."

According to figures provided by Lynas, a worker exposed to Lynas' rare earths stockpiles for 300 hours a year - what the company said was a "worst possible case" - would have a maximum exposure to a radiation level of 190 microsieverts a year. The annual maximum recommended exposure limit is 1000 microsieverts for the public or 20,000 for workers.