The Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) yesterday said the government has proposed a three-year plan for sealing up a reactor at the controversial Fourth Nuclear Power Plant until a national referendum is held to decide whether fuel rods should be inserted into the power plant’s reactor.
Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) has budgeted an initial cost of NT$1.2 billion (US$40 million) to NT$1.3 billion next year for sealing the No. 1 reactor of the power plant in New Taipei City’s Gongliao District (貢寮), the ministry said.
“The ministry expects a national referendum on the power plant issue to be held in two to three years,” local cable TV network UBN quoted Vice Minister of Economic Affairs Woody Duh (杜紫軍) as saying. “If no such referendum is held in the next three years, then the ministry would then decide how to proceed to the next stage.”
On Wednesday, the ministry announced at a press conference that the power plant had passed a review of the 126 systems in the No. 1 reactor.
The checks were carried out by a special safety inspection team from April last year to July 25 this year, the ministry said.
At the press conference, Taipower chairman Hwang Jung-chiou (黃重球) said the total cost of sealing the No. 1 reactor from next year through 2017 would be less than NT$2 billion.
The ministry plans to deliver the plan to seal the reactor and a report on the safety checks to the Atomic Energy Council by the end of this month and the end of next month respectively.
The nuclear power plant is nearly completed, but the fuel rods have not been installed due to widespread public opposition to its use.
The ministry said all safety inspections would need to be conducted again if the public in the future decides to turn on the No. 1 reactor at the plant.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained