If we want to learn about nuclear power safety here in Taiwan, we might find the answer in a simple plastic bottle.
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) recently said that when it comes to the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in Gongliao District (貢寮), New Taipei City (新北市), it is important to listen to people’s opinions, conduct thorough research, communicate, make careful decisions and carry out plans effectively. However, considering that the plant’s construction site does not even have a restroom, it is not likely that nuclear safety will ever become a reality in Taiwan.
More than two decades ago when I was interviewing people about the first three nuclear power plants, which had only been up and running for a few years, I discovered that the plants were plagued by the reactors randomly tripping.
Analysis of these incidents showed that, apart from the inevitable problems caused by natural events like earthquakes and typhoons, their biggest cause were things like malfunctioning circuit board control cards and overheating in the reactor units. Further analysis of these causes showed that many of the situations that were put down to “unknown causes” were actually due to “uric acid.”
What do circuit boards at a nuclear power plant have to do with uric acid? First I thought those problems were caused by mice, but later an engineer secretly told me that it was because there was no restroom at the plants’ construction sites, so workers would go to the toilet wherever they could — often against the walls. Their urine then turned into uric acid which seeped into and corroded the circuit boards. The result was irregular signals or lost control of the signals.
When a nuclear power plant trips, operations stop for several days. According to Taiwan Power Co (Taipower), the company loses NT$100 million (US$3.4 million) each day when a plant is down.
Forty years ago, sanitary and lifestyle habits were different, and lack of toilet facilities was in line with the times.
Here, I am reminded of a joke about a punctuation mark: There was once a house owner who became very frustrated because people were urinating on his wall so he put up a notice on the wall reading: “Pedestrians and others may not urinate here” (行人等不得在此小便). Little did he expect that the number of people urinating there would keep on increasing, because someone had added a comma to the original sentence, which changed the notice to: “Pedestrians who cannot hold on may urinate here” (行人等不得,在此小便).
I remembered this anecdote after the recent discussions about safety and the quality of construction at the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant.
I asked a person who had worked on the construction of the plant if there were toilets there. He gave me a wry smile and then sent me a photo, with a note that said the photo was taken at a section of the wall of one of the plant’s containment vessels.
I realized the picture was that of a plastic bottle cemented into the wall.
Things have indeed progressed since the time of the first three power plants: Workers now urinate into plastic bottles and throw them into the containment vessels while they are being filled with cement.
I am sure we could apply to the UN for World Heritage status for this plant. Apart from the plastic bottles and their contents, there is much other rubbish cemented into the wall and, regardless of whether we apply for World Heritage status or any other cultural status, we really should make sure that a record is kept of this.
The problems with the containment vessels at the plant do not stop there.
Broken rebars about 3cm thick have been found in the ninth shear wall. According to Atomic Energy Council (AEC, 原能會) records they have discovered 47 broken rebars in the shear wall of the containment vessels between the reactor and the fuel pool. This means there is a possibility that the shear wall is not structurally sound, and the number of broken rebars is likely to be higher than the AEC’s findings.
According to structural engineering standards, the shear wall should be knocked down and rebuilt.
However, construction of the plant is going ahead, and nothing has been torn down and rebuilt. Even worse, the AEC only issued a small fine of NT$300,000 to Taipower, without demanding any safety inspections or verifications.
Nuclear safety can be discussed anywhere in the world — but not in Taiwan, because nuclear safety does not exist here.
After almost 40 years of nuclear power, there has been no nuclear disaster. Statistically speaking, that is highly improbable. Ma does not necessarily have to listen humbly to the opinions of nuclear power opponents, nor does he have to spend money on bringing in foreign teams for certification purposes.
However, he has to take notice of the message about nuclear safety contained in that plastic bottle.
Jay Fang is the chairman of the Green Consumers’ Foundation.
Translated by Drew Cameron
Two sets of economic data released last week by the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) have drawn mixed reactions from the public: One on the nation’s economic performance in the first quarter of the year and the other on Taiwan’s household wealth distribution in 2021. GDP growth for the first quarter was faster than expected, at 6.51 percent year-on-year, an acceleration from the previous quarter’s 4.93 percent and higher than the agency’s February estimate of 5.92 percent. It was also the highest growth since the second quarter of 2021, when the economy expanded 8.07 percent, DGBAS data showed. The growth
In the intricate ballet of geopolitics, names signify more than mere identification: They embody history, culture and sovereignty. The recent decision by China to refer to Arunachal Pradesh as “Tsang Nan” or South Tibet, and to rename Tibet as “Xizang,” is a strategic move that extends beyond cartography into the realm of diplomatic signaling. This op-ed explores the implications of these actions and India’s potential response. Names are potent symbols in international relations, encapsulating the essence of a nation’s stance on territorial disputes. China’s choice to rename regions within Indian territory is not merely a linguistic exercise, but a symbolic assertion
More than seven months into the armed conflict in Gaza, the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to take “immediate and effective measures” to protect Palestinians in Gaza from the risk of genocide following a case brought by South Africa regarding Israel’s breaches of the 1948 Genocide Convention. The international community, including Amnesty International, called for an immediate ceasefire by all parties to prevent further loss of civilian lives and to ensure access to life-saving aid. Several protests have been organized around the world, including at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and many other universities in the US.
In the 2022 book Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict with China, academics Hal Brands and Michael Beckley warned, against conventional wisdom, that it was not a rising China that the US and its allies had to fear, but a declining China. This is because “peaking powers” — nations at the peak of their relative power and staring over the precipice of decline — are particularly dangerous, as they might believe they only have a narrow window of opportunity to grab what they can before decline sets in, they said. The tailwinds that propelled China’s spectacular economic rise over the past