Public participation in the selection of major national technologies should be based on accurate and complete information. This should be a matter of common sense when it comes to making science and technology policies in a democracy. The controversy over the nuclear power issue has been raging for more than 30 years in Taiwan. The problem lies in the frequent failures of the government, Taiwan Power Co and nuclear experts to provide accurate information about anything nuclear. Unfortunately, although the government has initiated a referendum on the construction of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in Gongliao District (貢寮), New Taipei City (新北市), this situation remains unchanged.
On Wednesday last week, TVBS broadcast a talk show discussing the nuclear power issue. When some of the guests argued over whether there was an appropriate site for the final storage of nuclear waste, National Tsing Hua University nuclear engineering professor Lee Min (李敏) said that US President Barack Obama terminated the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository project in Nevada for political reasons. According to Lee, the project was terminated because of the great influence of US Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who represents Nevada. Lee said the termination of the project was purely a political decision, and not a matter of the US being unable to find a proper site for the final disposal of nuclear waste.
However, on March 5, 2009, the New York Times ran a story titled “Future Dim for Nuclear Waste Repository,” reporting that the site for the repository had not been selected through a scientific process of elimination.
Instead, “it was selected from a list in 1987 by Congress, which declared it dry and remote enough ... Scientific concerns have since emerged, including the realization that water flows through Yucca Mountain a lot faster than initially believed. That raises the prospect that the nuclear waste would leach over time, polluting the water table,” the paper said.
In other words, the information provided by Lee was not complete, and it left the impression that the Obama administration’s decision to close the nuclear waste site was based purely on political reasons, rather than scientific ones.
The newspaper also reported that “the scientific merit of the site has not been established by independent judges.”
This is not to imply that Lee is lying. Indeed, in light of the strong opposition to the site among Yucca Mountain residents, Obama’s decision might well help him attract votes in Nevada. Still, let us not forget that there are no nuclear power plants in Nevada. The plan to build a nuclear waste repository there is similar to Taiwan’s disposal of nuclear waste on Lanyu (蘭嶼), where there also are no nuclear power plants.
We can learn two lessons from this. First, when scientific experts who are interested parties in the issue at hand blame an issue on political distortions of science and technology, the public needs to review all the related information with caution to avoid being misled.
The second lesson is that decisionmakers and scientific experts must remember that one important reason why nuclear power has lost public credibility in Taiwan is that supporters of nuclear power frequently provide incomplete, unclear and even inaccurate information.
Nevertheless, using information that is readily available in today’s Internet age, one-sided information can be easily exposed and rebutted.
Li Shang-jen is an associate research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of History and Philology.
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
Ursula K. le Guin in The Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas proposed a thought experiment of a utopian city whose existence depended on one child held captive in a dungeon. When taken to extremes, Le Guin suggests, utilitarian logic violates some of our deepest moral intuitions. Even the greatest social goods — peace, harmony and prosperity — are not worth the sacrifice of an innocent person. Former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), since leaving office, has lived an odyssey that has brought him to lows like Le Guin’s dungeon. From late 2008 to 2015 he was imprisoned, much of this