Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) said yesterday that the first reactor at the Jinshan Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s Shihmen District (石門) may have to be mothballed next year due to the lack of storage space for nuclear waste.
The Ministry of Economic Affairs said it was in negotiations with France about a solution to the nation’s lack of storage space for nuclear waste.
In a question-and-answer session yesterday at a meeting of the Economics Committee at the Legislative Yuan in Taipei, legislators expressed concern about the processing methods for low and high-level nuclear waste.
Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times
Taipower said the two spent-fuel pools at the Jinshan plant contained 2,982 and 2,856 spent fuel rods respectively, while the pools at the Guosheng Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s Wanli District (萬里) contain 4,180 and 4,068 rods, while the pools at the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant in Ma-anshan (馬鞍山), Pingtung County, contain 1,311 and 1,339 rods.
The spent-fuel pool of Jinshan’s No. 1 reactor would be full by November this year, when it undergoes its annual maintenance, Taipower said.
The pools at the Guosheng and Ma-anshan plants would face the same problem in 2016 and 2025 respectively, Taipower said.
Taipower vice president Chen Pu-tsan (陳布燦) said that the company has no choice but to leave the spent fuel rods in the reactor as there is no other storage space available.
Chen said that although the Jinshan Plant is due to operate until 2018, the lack of storage space means it would only be able to generate power until the end of next year, when it would have to be powered down, effectively mothballing it.
Minister of Economic Affairs Chang Chia-juch (張家祝) said he could not comment on the possibility of the New Taipei City Government agreeing to build nuclear storage bays after the seven-in-one elections in November.
Chang said the government had been in negotiations with other nations, such as China, North Korea, Russia and the Marshall Islands, about the possibility of them processing Taiwan’s nuclear waste.
“We have not received any positive responses to date,” Chang said.
North Korea has previously sued Taipower of failing to honor a contract, signed in 1996, to deliver it nuclear waste for disposal. The contract was not fulfilled due to claims that North Korea had not upheld Atomic Energy Council standards and Taipower therefore failed to procure a permit from the council to export the waste.
In response to a question from Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lee Ching-hua (李慶華), Chang confirmed that the government had approached France as a possible candidate to take the waste, as it possesses the technology to recycle and reuse nuclear waste.
Chen said Taipower had also been in contact with France, adding that if a deal is done, the cost of transporting the materials to France would be very steep, pointing to the example of Japan, which also ships its nuclear waste to France.
Chang said storing the waste on an uninhabited island was not high on the list of options due to the lack of such an island, but it was an option if such a location could be found.
Chang said he could not reveal the location of the inhabited islands where the government is considering building nuclear waste storage facilities, another option, for fear that people may change their registered household address to those islands to claim the government subsidies paid to residents living nearby nuclear waste storage facilities, such as Lanyu (蘭嶼).
PREPAREDNESS: Given the difficulty of importing ammunition during wartime, the Ministry of National Defense said it would prioritize ‘coproduction’ partnerships A newly formed unit of the Marine Corps tasked with land-based security operations has recently replaced its aging, domestically produced rifles with more advanced, US-made M4A1 rifles, a source said yesterday. The unnamed source familiar with the matter said the First Security Battalion of the Marine Corps’ Air Defense and Base Guard Group has replaced its older T65K2 rifles, which have been in service since the late 1980s, with the newly received M4A1s. The source did not say exactly when the upgrade took place or how many M4A1s were issued to the battalion. The confirmation came after Chinese-language media reported
The Taiwanese passport ranked 33rd in a global listing of passports by convenience this month, rising three places from last month’s ranking, but matching its position in January last year. The Henley Passport Index, an international ranking of passports by the number of designations its holder can travel to without a visa, showed that the Taiwan passport enables holders to travel to 139 countries and territories without a visa. Singapore’s passport was ranked the most powerful with visa-free access to 192 destinations out of 227, according to the index published on Tuesday by UK-based migration investment consultancy firm Henley and Partners. Japan’s and
A Ministry of Foreign Affairs official yesterday said that a delegation that visited China for an APEC meeting did not receive any kind of treatment that downgraded Taiwan’s sovereignty. Department of International Organizations Director-General Jonathan Sun (孫儉元) said that he and a group of ministry officials visited Shenzhen, China, to attend the APEC Informal Senior Officials’ Meeting last month. The trip went “smoothly and safely” for all Taiwanese delegates, as the Chinese side arranged the trip in accordance with long-standing practices, Sun said at the ministry’s weekly briefing. The Taiwanese group did not encounter any political suppression, he said. Sun made the remarks when
BROAD AGREEMENT: The two are nearing a trade deal to reduce Taiwan’s tariff to 15% and a commitment for TSMC to build five more fabs, a ‘New York Times’ report said Taiwan and the US have reached a broad consensus on a trade deal, the Executive Yuan’s Office of Trade Negotiations said yesterday, after a report said that Washington is set to reduce Taiwan’s tariff rate to 15 percent. The New York Times on Monday reported that the two nations are nearing a trade deal to reduce Taiwan’s tariff rate to 15 percent and commit Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) to building at least five more facilities in the US. “The agreement, which has been under negotiation for months, is being legally scrubbed and could be announced this month,” the paper said,
RSS