Environmental activists yesterday vowed to stage a large-scale protest if the government does not immediately suspend the construction of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant, as well as re-examine the nation’s three operational nuclear power plants.
Saying that Taiwan would be hopeless if the incident at Japan’s Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant happened here, Green Party Taiwan spokesperson Pan Han-shen (潘翰聲) said the residents of Gongliao District (貢寮), New Taipei City (新北市), where the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant is located, would hold a demonstration in front of the Executive Yuan tomorrow morning, demanding an immediate suspension to the power plant’s construction.
Those planning to join election primaries for legislators representing Taipei City and New Taipei City should tell the voters where they stand on this issue, he added.
Pan’s avowal was made at a press conference held by Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators Tien Chiu-chin (田秋堇), Lin Shu-fen (林淑芬) and Huang Sue-ying (黃淑英).
At the press conference, Tien played what she said was a recorded conversation between an engineer of the state-run Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) and his supervisor. According to the tape, the engineer was pressured by his supervisor to pay the contractor, who only partially followed the original design of the protective facilities at the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant — also known as the Longmen Nuclear Power Plant — laid out by General Electric Co.
Gloria Hsu (徐光蓉), a professor at National Taiwan University (NTU), accused Taipower of changing the original design at its discretion and even skimping on construction materials. For example, Hsu said, the company replaced the heat-resistant gaskets with plastic ones.
“After what happened at Fukushima, many countries around the world are re-examining the soundness of their nuclear power plants,” she said. “Only the Taiwanese government acts like this is no big deal.”
Referring to remarks made by Atomic Energy Council Deputy Minister Huang Tsing-tung (黃慶東) during a legislative session on Monday that the nation’s nuclear power plants were built on stable bedrock, making them as solid as the “lotus-shaped pedestal supporting the goddess Guanyin,” Hsu questioned why the government officials could be so confident to say that the nation would not see a nuclear power crisis similar to that of Fukushima.
“Japan, Russia and the US have all seen nuclear power accidents happen in their own countries. We purchased the power plant facilities from the US and we ended up having more faith in these facilities. This is ridiculous,” Hsu said.
Hsu also said the nation’s operational plants — Jinshan, -Guosheng and Ma-anshan nuclear power plants — were built to withstand a peak ground acceleration (PGA) of 0.3G. However, the government raised the PGA to 0.33G after the 921 earthquake in 1999. The facilities do not follow this updated regulation, she said.
Shih Shin-min (施信民), also of NTU, stressed the importance of raising the fourth plant’s ability to cope with the impact of earthquakes. Instead of a magnitude 7 quake, the power plant must be able to withstand a magnitude 9 earthquake, he said.
‘ABUSE OF POWER’: Lee Chun-yi allegedly used a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon and take his wife to restaurants, media reports said Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) resigned on Sunday night, admitting that he had misused a government vehicle, as reported by the media. Control Yuan Vice President Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) yesterday apologized to the public over the issue. The watchdog body would follow up on similar accusations made by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and would investigate the alleged misuse of government vehicles by three other Control Yuan members: Su Li-chiung (蘇麗瓊), Lin Yu-jung (林郁容) and Wang Jung-chang (王榮璋), Lee Hung-chun said. Lee Chun-yi in a statement apologized for using a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a
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The High Court yesterday found a New Taipei City woman guilty of charges related to helping Beijing secure surrender agreements from military service members. Lee Huei-hsin (李慧馨) was sentenced to six years and eight months in prison for breaching the National Security Act (國家安全法), making illegal compacts with government employees and bribery, the court said. The verdict is final. Lee, the manager of a temple in the city’s Lujhou District (蘆洲), was accused of arranging for eight service members to make surrender pledges to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in exchange for money, the court said. The pledges, which required them to provide identification
INDO-PACIFIC REGION: Royal Navy ships exercise the right of freedom of navigation, including in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, the UK’s Tony Radakin told a summit Freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific region is as important as it is in the English Channel, British Chief of the Defence Staff Admiral Tony Radakin said at a summit in Singapore on Saturday. The remark came as the British Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, the HMS Prince of Wales, is on an eight-month deployment to the Indo-Pacific region as head of an international carrier strike group. “Upholding the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and with it, the principles of the freedom of navigation, in this part of the world matters to us just as it matters in the
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