Opponents of nuclear energy are sure to be dismayed that the Atomic Energy Council on Monday approved the restart of the No. 2 reactor at the Guosheng Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s Wanli District (萬里).
Technically, there is nothing wrong with the decision, as the reactor’s license runs until 2023 and there are still a few years to go before the government’s pledge to completely phase out nuclear energy by 2025.
The reactor has been mothballed for 600 days following damage in 2016 and, while the concerns of environmentalists are indeed valid, the council said that it has been monitoring Taiwan Power Co’s (Taipower) maintenance of the reactor and would continue to ensure safe operations according to the law.
However, the council was also supposed to be monitoring Taipower’s maintenance of the reactor before it broke down two years ago.
Fortunately, disaster was averted that time, but it is an old reactor and humans are doing the monitoring, so some things could go undetected.
Furthermore, things do happen that are completely out of Taipower’s control, such as natural disasters or sabotage.
So there is cause for alarm, even if it is just speculation.
The reactor restart also casts doubt on the government’s statements, as in August last year, when then-premier Lin Chuan (林全) “rejected the possibility of restarting inactive nuclear reactors, despite the risk of further power shortages,” asking Taipower to “fill the power gap.”
Premier William Lai (賴清德) in November last year said that he would not consider restarting nuclear reactors in the event of an electricity shortage and later in the same news conference said nuclear energy would be the “last resort.”
On Friday last week, Lai said that Taipower’s application to restart the reactor is standard procedure and that it has absolutely nothing to do with the administration’s pledge to establish a “nuclear-free homeland” by 2025.
Asked about electricity shortages, Lai said that “the company’s power generation would undoubtedly be enough to cover this year’s consumption.”
That statement was made three days before the reactor restart was approved.
Lai knew that restarting the reactor would create a huge public backlash regardless of whether it has anything to do with the government’s pledge, and with public distrust of the administration mounting, it makes one question whether things are more serious than Lai makes out and whether the government’s pledge is realistic.
Taipower claims that the reactor is merely being restarted so it can bolster its energy reserves, but is the nation really in a place where the only option was to restart a broken and aging reactor?
Despite the government’s pledge and years of protests against nuclear power, there are also experts who see nuclear energy as a good thing and as the decision to restart the reactor has already been made and technically does not violate the government’s promises, the public can only hope for the best and that nothing catastrophic happens.
The council on Sunday said that Taipower is still looking for a site to store its nuclear waste.
Taiwan is not the US, where there is plenty of land far away enough from settlements to do this, and hence it was dumped on the Tao Aborigines on Orchid Island (Lanyu, 蘭嶼) in the 1990s.
The government cannot do something like that again and whatever site Taipower finally chooses it is sure to cause a public outcry.
Taiwan stands at the epicenter of a seismic shift that will determine the Indo-Pacific’s future security architecture. Whether deterrence prevails or collapses will reverberate far beyond the Taiwan Strait, fundamentally reshaping global power dynamics. The stakes could not be higher. Today, Taipei confronts an unprecedented convergence of threats from an increasingly muscular China that has intensified its multidimensional pressure campaign. Beijing’s strategy is comprehensive: military intimidation, diplomatic isolation, economic coercion, and sophisticated influence operations designed to fracture Taiwan’s democratic society from within. This challenge is magnified by Taiwan’s internal political divisions, which extend to fundamental questions about the island’s identity and future
The narrative surrounding Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s attendance at last week’s Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit — where he held hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin and chatted amiably with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) — was widely framed as a signal of Modi distancing himself from the US and edging closer to regional autocrats. It was depicted as Modi reacting to the levying of high US tariffs, burying the hatchet over border disputes with China, and heralding less engagement with the Quadrilateral Security dialogue (Quad) composed of the US, India, Japan and Australia. With Modi in China for the
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has postponed its chairperson candidate registration for two weeks, and so far, nine people have announced their intention to run for chairperson, the most on record, with more expected to announce their campaign in the final days. On the evening of Aug. 23, shortly after seven KMT lawmakers survived recall votes, KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) announced he would step down and urged Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕) to step in and lead the party back to power. Lu immediately ruled herself out the following day, leaving the subject in question. In the days that followed, several
The Jamestown Foundation last week published an article exposing Beijing’s oil rigs and other potential dual-use platforms in waters near Pratas Island (Dongsha Island, 東沙島). China’s activities there resembled what they did in the East China Sea, inside the exclusive economic zones of Japan and South Korea, as well as with other South China Sea claimants. However, the most surprising element of the report was that the authors’ government contacts and Jamestown’s own evinced little awareness of China’s activities. That Beijing’s testing of Taiwanese (and its allies) situational awareness seemingly went unnoticed strongly suggests the need for more intelligence. Taiwan’s naval
RSS