On June 13, the eve of the legislative recess, legislators voted to pass the budget for state-owned companies, including a considerable sum earmarked for the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant, also known as the Longmen Nuclear Power Plant. Although the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) proposed a budget amendment, it was, given its minority share of seats, unsuccessful.
A protest by anti-nuclear activists outside the Legislative Yuan also ultimately failed to prevent the budget for the nuclear plant being passed. The protesters want Taiwan to be a “nuclear-free homeland,” demanding that those in power set a timetable for it. Frustrated in their attempts to have the old nuclear power plants decommissioned, their only option was to try to prevent the new one from being commissioned. From a purely professional perspective, however, the priority should be the decommissioning of the old ones.
The government has consistently said that Taiwan’s nuclear power plants are absolutely safe. This is an irresponsible claim. Any nuclear power plant has to undergo strict safety inspections and we all think that it is safe by virtue of this. That is, until an accident occurs. Constant maintenance does not always guarantee safety. A nuclear plant is like an automobile, in that regardless of how good the maintenance work is, it is impossible to say that it will never break down or be involved in an accident.
True, safety levels for nuclear power plants are very high, but this does not guarantee absolute safety. Besides, the safety mechanisms can hardly guard against human error, flaws, wars or natural disasters. Even the most beautifully engineered automobile is still vulnerable to being involved in an accident.
Nuclear disasters happen very infrequently, but the damage when they do occur can be catastrophic. While nuclear power does bring great benefits to the general public as a whole, we are putting residents who live near nuclear power plants at risk. I oppose nuclear power simply because I am sympathetic to such residents. However, I also oppose favoring politics over informed decisions. Anti-nuclear activists should approach it from a more professional perspective and the fact that the majority of them don’t takes away much of the potency of their campaign.
To build a nuclear-free homeland, we should be trying to develop alternative energy sources capable of replacing nuclear power. Some anti-nuclear activists claim that the “reserve margin” of Taiwan Power Co’s (Taipower) power system, a required power reserve that is readily available, can exceed the total power generation volume of the nation’s three operating nuclear power plants, meaning that the three plants can be decommissioned right away. Is this true? I haven’t worked for Taipower for many years now, so I do not know the answer to that question. Regardless, we cannot replace nuclear power with reserve margins like this. Not every generator can attain optimum output and the reserve margin is necessary. A power system should always take instability, malfunctions and downtime into consideration.
For the sake of residents living near our nuclear power plants, the government should develop a timetable for a nuclear-free homeland and look into alternative energy sources. At present, anti-nuclear activists are proposing the cancelation of the Longmen plant first, followed by the gradual decommissioning of the old ones. However, their proposal is questionable. If we actually had the alternative energy sources to replace nuclear power — which we don’t — or could immediately reduce our usage of electricity — which we can’t — then of course we could scrap all the nuclear power plants now.
However, as we do not have the capabilities of doing so at the moment, we can only achieve the goal of a nuclear-free homeland step by step. When it comes to nuclear power plants, safety is paramount. The older a plant is, the more unreliable its safety facilities are. In general, the newer the plant is, the safer it should be. We should therefore decommission the old plants first before preventing the Longmen plant from operating.
To extend the automobile metaphor, a regular power plant should shut down when an accident happens. Similarly, a regular car will stop running when it breaks down. The same is not true when it comes to nuclear power plants, because when an accident occurs the crisis has only just begun. It’s like a car that accelerates of its own accord when something goes wrong. Therefore, a good automatic braking system is necessary and this “braking system” is certainly much better in the newer nuclear power plants than in the old. The majority of the plants that have experienced problems in the past had aged safety facilities.
Even if we were able to insert control rods into a nuclear reactor when an accident happened, we would only be able to halt nuclear fission, not nuclear disintegration. And most seriously, both scenarios will result in huge amounts of heat being produced. When an accident happens, then, we need to cool down the core with an emergency core cooling system. This system is another thing that is so much more dependable in new plants than older ones.
Chen Mao-hsiung is chairman of the Society for the Promotion of Taiwanese Security.
TRANSLATED BY EDDY CHANG
Could Asia be on the verge of a new wave of nuclear proliferation? A look back at the early history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, illuminates some reasons for concern in the Indo-Pacific today. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently described NATO as “the most powerful and successful alliance in history,” but the organization’s early years were not without challenges. At its inception, the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty marked a sea change in American strategic thinking. The United States had been intent on withdrawing from Europe in the years following
My wife and I spent the week in the interior of Taiwan where Shuyuan spent her childhood. In that town there is a street that functions as an open farmer’s market. Walk along that street, as Shuyuan did yesterday, and it is next to impossible to come home empty-handed. Some mangoes that looked vaguely like others we had seen around here ended up on our table. Shuyuan told how she had bought them from a little old farmer woman from the countryside who said the mangoes were from a very old tree she had on her property. The big surprise
The issue of China’s overcapacity has drawn greater global attention recently, with US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen urging Beijing to address its excess production in key industries during her visit to China last week. Meanwhile in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week said that Europe must have a tough talk with China on its perceived overcapacity and unfair trade practices. The remarks by Yellen and Von der Leyen come as China’s economy is undergoing a painful transition. Beijing is trying to steer the world’s second-largest economy out of a COVID-19 slump, the property crisis and
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) trip to China provides a pertinent reminder of why Taiwanese protested so vociferously against attempts to force through the cross-strait service trade agreement in 2014 and why, since Ma’s presidential election win in 2012, they have not voted in another Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate. While the nation narrowly avoided tragedy — the treaty would have put Taiwan on the path toward the demobilization of its democracy, which Courtney Donovan Smith wrote about in the Taipei Times in “With the Sunflower movement Taiwan dodged a bullet” — Ma’s political swansong in China, which included fawning dithyrambs