Store waste at legislature
President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) was wrong to invoke the "golden rule" in response to the young Tao student's petition for the removal of the low radioactive waste storage facility from Orchid Island ("Child upstages Chen after speech," April 9, page 2).
The low radioactive waste is safe and should not be considered an undesirable menace by educated decision makers in the central government. It is only a menace to those superstitious and naive minorities to whom the government has failed to devote sufficient educational resources.
The win-win solution is to transfer the "harmless cans" to the Legislative Yuan where, supposedly, the brightest of the nation convene. A low-radioactive waste storage facility should be included in the planned new legislature and the entire project should be financed by the government's nuclear waste fund. As the number of legislative seats is reduced, more room will be made for new cans. The legislature should be surrounded by civil servant dormitories and ministries so that there are no ignorant civilian neighbors complaining about these gifts of progress.
Why leave those yellow cans in a neighborhood of Luddites, whose fear is beyond salvage, when the government district offers an enlightened neighborhood whose residents will have the intelligence to understand the science and engineering involved.
Fossil fuel supplies will always be uncertain and the so-called renewable energy sources have yet to reach either econo-mic efficiency or scale. Nuclear power must remain an option. The government is responsible for educating its citizens about the safety of nuclear technologies. Storing low-radioactive waste in the legislature will go a long way to convince citizens that the yellow cans are not evil spirits.
The legislature has to do more to secure Taiwan's nuclear future beyond merely forcing the government to resume construction of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant.
One further step it could take would be to store the spent nuclear fuel in the legislature where no thief or terrorist would be able to get to it. The landmark status of the building will ensure proper management well into the future and beyond the half life of the isotopes.
Legislators, please learn to take comfort in the nuclear safety technologies of the 21st century.
Chekgiau William Ng
Sanchung, Taipei County
Tang ignorant of history
I read your editorial ("Defend-ing a nation, not an old idea," May 1, page 8) with interest. I think it is very important that the people of Taiwan and especially Minister of National Defense Tang Yao-ming (
First, during his interpellation Tang stated that he would defend the ROC but he also said that he would not defend a Republic of Taiwan.
Second, I find extremely strange Tang's comparison of the willingness of his troops to fight to that of those who fought against the Japanese in World War II. How could any Taiwan-ese reach his position and age without knowing that Taiwan was a part of the Japanese Empire during the war? Is the fact that the Taiwanese fought on the Japanese side a historical fact that he is trying to delete?
Either Tang is out of his mind or he believes he is Chinese. If he thinks he is Chinese then what is his concept of the ROC? Does he think that the ROC's territories include the PRC and the Republic of Mongolia as well as Taiwan? If so, then what is it that his troops are going to defend so bravely? Is he still fighting Japanese invaders? If not, he must still be fighting a protracted Chinese civil war. If so, he should know that the Taiwanese said no to civil war decades ago in their bloody protests from Feb. 28, 1947.
In reality, the ROC now consists only of the two small territories of Kinmen and Matsu. Taiwan and the Pescadores are de-facto independent territories. As far back as 1958, the US made this clear to Mao Zedong (
The ROC is, as far as the Taiwanese are concerned, an occupying force. When Chinese troops landed in Taiwan in 1945, almost all the Taiwanese working under the Japanese admin-istration in governmental positions were immediately replaced by incompetent and corrupt Chinese officials.
These people have enjoyed their status as the ruling class now for two or three generations. These occupying forces do not have a clue that the First Taiwan Republic was established in 1895, and that what is actually going on right now -- the democratization of Taiwan and the continuation of its independence movement -- is the formation of the second republic of Taiwan, whose territories only include Taiwan and the Pescadores.
That some members of the security services, the military and other branches of government switched sides when Chen took office, was inevitable. For the benefit of the people, however, we have a responsibility to make it very clear that we must stand up and fight to protect our young democratic Taiwan against Chinese aggression of any kind.
Kenbo Liao
Taipei
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