The US sports media came up with a new word, “Linsanity,” to describe the unexpected — and inexplicable — string of astonishing performances by NBA player Jeremy Lin (林書豪).
On June 18, Atomic Energy Council (AEC) Minister Tsai Chuen-horng (蔡春鴻) and the council’s Department of Nuclear Regulation director Chen Yi-pin (陳宜彬) decided that Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) should restart reactor No. 1 of the Guosheng Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s (新北市) Wanli District (萬里). If one were to choose a word that best described this decision, one could not go far wrong with “insanity” here, either. What they are doing is essentially setting up the conditions for a compounded natural disaster and human catastrophe.
Taiwan was recently hit by torrential rain, with Tropical Storm Talin threatening to hit about 48 hours after the rain abated. It takes roughly 48 hours for a nuclear power plant to set up a parallel connection and to start producing power after initialization. According to safe operating procedure at nuclear power plants, the generators have to be slowed down or even stopped altogether in the event of a tropical storm or typhoon, which presents no problems in itself as offices and schools are shut and so the demand for power is significantly reduced on typhoon days. However, nuclear power generators are huge and if anything goes wrong it is difficult to deal with the problem, with catastrophic results for both the electricity grid and the power plant itself.
According to a number of very experienced Taipower employees, this is the first time in more than 30 years that the council has dictated to Taipower when to activate a nuclear reactor. In the past it has merely given the go-ahead, leaving the decision as to when to switch back on to Taipower. Interestingly, on the evening of June 18 the council put out a press release announcing the reactivation of the reactor, listing the contact person as Chen himself, together with his contact details. This has been interpreted by environmental groups as a blatant provocation to those opposed to nuclear power, or at least by way of discouraging them to call in or text message.
Even though summer is upon us, a time when more demands are made of the power grid, plants were only producing 60 percent of their total capacity during peak hours because the public is seeking to save energy in the face of the recent electricity price hikes. Coupled with that, there was a tropical storm threatening to hit. According to Taipower employees, the decision to reactivate the generator was a bad one, one that Taipower would not have made itself, demonstrating that council officials were taking a risk simply because they wanted to have the extra nuclear power merely for the sake of producing it.
In mid-March there were reports that broken anchor bolts were found at the reactor in question. No one had more cause for concern than workers in the plant. A broken bolt was found in reactor No. 2 last year, too, in what was termed at the time “an isolated case,” and the reactor was turned on without replacing the bolt.
Now we hear that seven more broken bolts have been discovered in the first reactor and officials in Taipower and the council are sure to want to call this an isolated case as well. Tsai even said there would be no safety concerns even if every single anchor bolt developed 2.5mm cracks, and Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators believed him.
On June 5, I sent out post office evidentiary letters (存證信函) to 27 legislators in constituencies in Taipei, New Taipei City, Keelung, Taoyuan County and Yilan County, officially informing them that the Guosheng nuclear power plant has 10 major safety concerns that should be looked into before the plant is restarted.
Legally speaking, if an accident occurs at the plant in future that is related to the safety concerns surrounding these faulty bolts, then these legislators can be held politically accountable, as they would have failed to fulfill their duty as legislators to oversee the actions of the executive branch.
In the US beef imports standoff in the legislature, these particular lawmakers showed themselves to be rather indifferent to these responsibilities.
Over the course of this whole process, we have borne witness to the excessive willful blindness and egotistical manner of the council and Taipower and the mentality of “oh, it’ll be alright” as they disregard the most fundamental safety measures. They think it is about changing seven bolts, when actually it is about nuclear safety guarantees.
Some people say that the council officials are guilty of professional arrogance, but one might also say they are simply arrogance personified, constantly reminding us that we do not know what we are talking about, that we do not understand the issues, when in fact they themselves cannot even comply with a single one of the 18 clauses of the nuclear power quality assurance stipulations. It is like having a racing driver with absolutely no regard for the rules of the track: Just because they are professionals does not mean they can drive as they please.
A nuclear engineer friend of mine said to me: “We cannot say God didn’t give us a chance. We have taken the warnings we have been given as so much wind blowing past our ears. Should there be a nuclear accident, there is no way we can blame God. We will only have ourselves to blame.”
Jay Fang is the chairman of the Green Consumers’ Foundation.
Translated by Paul Cooper
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