Industry leaders yesterday urged the government to reconsider plans to phase out nuclear power by 2025, saying a power outage on Tuesday deepened their concerns over the practicality and desirability of the proposed gas-focused energy mix.
“Authorities should review their energy policy and entertain the possibility of activating the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant to avoid unexpected massive blackouts and subsequent power rationing,” Chinese National Association of Industry and Commerce (工商協進會) chairman Lin Por-fong (林伯豐) said.
If the nation had maintained greater power reserves, the outage would not have wreaked havoc and power rationing might have been avoided, Lin said on the sidelines of a public function.
According to state-run utility Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電), power rationing is necessary when electrical reserves drop to less than 500,000 kilowatts (kW), lower than a “red” alert, which indicates a reserve margin of less than 900,000kW, or 2.4 percent of total capacity.
A stable and sufficient power supply is critical to economic activity, especially for manufacturing and commercial facilities that run 24 hours a day, Lin said, adding that the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant — the mothballed project in New Taipei City’s Gongliao District (貢寮) — could boost the reserve margin, but the government has left it idle in pursuit of a nuclear-power-free policy.
Business sectors have voiced misgivings about the government’s energy policy reform plan, under which natural gas would provide 50 percent of power generation, coal would contribute 30 percent and renewable energy sources would fill the remainder.
Without nuclear power plants, the nation’s electricity reserve could drop to less than 3 percent in 2025, and power shortages could deal a serious blow to industrial output and economic activity, the Chinese National Federation of Industries (全國工業總會) said in a position paper last month.
Lai Cheng-yi (賴正鎰), head of the General Chamber of Commerce and chairman of Shining Construction Group (鄉林集團), said power rationing on Tuesday affected 6.68 million households, companies and factories, causing inconvenience to 50 percent of Taiwanese energy users.
“The power outage warrants a review of the government’s energy policy… It might be wiser to activate nuclear power plants,” Lai said.
Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (台灣經濟研究院) chairman Chiang Pin-kung (江丙坤) said the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant is 10 times safer than the nation’s existing nuclear facilities and has lower radiation levels.
Nuclear power plants, which generate about 16 percent of the nation’s electricity, play an important role in guaranteeing a stable energy supply, he said.
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