Lax maintenance cited in plant fire

Minister of Economic Affairs Lin Hsin-yi (林信義) said yesterday that replacing damaged insulators on power lines and increasing the frequency of maintenance would reduce the likelihood of a repeat fire at one of the nation's nuclear power plants.

Lin yesterday traveled to the state-run Taiwan Power Co's (Taipower, 台電) Third Nuclear Power Plant (核三) in Pingtung County to get to the bottom of the incident that shut down the plant's No. 1 and No. 2 generators early on Sunday morning.

The minister confirmed that thick, seasonal fog that rolls in from the sea had caused a build-up of salty crystals on insulators covering transmission lines and led to a malfunction at the plant, sparking a fire when back-up generators were engaged.

"Although Taipower had scheduled a clean-up of the current insulators between March 17 and March 20, it was caught by surprise by the incident on the night of March 17," Lin said.

Indeed, Lin was at pains not to describe the incident as a nuclear accident, instead preferring to call it a power transmission problem, adding that there was no radiation leak.

While not blaming Taipower directly for the incident, he did say there was "room for Taipower to improve" and suggested increasing the frequency of maintenance work on transmission lines and replacing damaged insulators.

Power supply was restored to the plant within two hours of the stoppage, according to Taipower.

Lin said it would take three weeks to repair the damage and additional time after that to run tests.

This latest incident was likely to spark renewed debate over whether Taiwan should rely on nuclear power for energy. In February, President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) anti-nuclear government bowed to opposition pressure and decided to resume construction of a US$5.5 billion nuclear plant, the nation's fourth.

Chen Chao-yi (陳昭義), executive secretary of the Energy Commission, said that although this was the first time in the nation's 22-year history of using nuclear power that a 3A emergency had been declared, the incident would make the government's job of convincing the people that nuclear energy is safe "a whole lot tougher."

A category four emergency could lead to an overall evacuation of local residents, according to Taipower's security guidelines.

Taipower said it had declared a category 3A emergency because the power outage lasted more than 15 minutes.

Hsi Shih-chi (席時濟), chairman of Taipower, said that given that this was the first time such a severe incident had struck Taiwan's nuclear power generation system, it provided the state-run utility a good opportunity to prepare to better cope with similar incidents in the future.

"This incident will strengthen Taipower's ability to deal with such events," Hsi said, adding that with improved maintenance measures it was unlikely such an incident would occur again.

KMT lawmaker Chu Fong-chi (朱鳳芝) said the accident reflected the inflexibility of Taipower's management of the power plant.

She warned that this poses a grave risk to the future management of the nation's Fourth Nuclear Power Plant.

Lin, however, said the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant will be much safer than the other three, and said he would not give an order to stop construction of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant, despite the incident.