The Atomic Energy Council (AEC) yesterday said it has received state-run Taiwan Power Co’s (Taipower, 台電) application to restart the Guosheng Nuclear Power Plant’s No. 2 reactor, which was shut down by its safety mechanism on March 28.
The plant in New Taipei City’s Wanli District (萬里) is equipped with two 985-megawatt reactors.
Its No. 1 reactor is one of the two currently operating nuclear reactors in the nation.
The council last month approved Taipower’s application to restart the reactor, which became operational on March 27. However, a shutdown was triggered the following day due to a problem with its steam valve.
Taipower’s initial assessment was that the shutdown might have resulted from a sensor in the reactor’s steam valve being set to be too sensitive, and yesterday it said that foreign experts had backed that finding.
Environmental groups have long opposed restarting the reactor, saying its initial shutdown on May 16, 2016, just 35 minutes after a restart, made them question Taipower’s management.
Taipower has filed a review report on the incident as required, which includes evaluations about its restart procedures, the cause of the shutdown, improvement measures, safety assessments regarding the reactor’s future restart and a simulated run of the reactor, the council said yesterday in a statement.
The council will form an expert committee to review the report and conduct a field examination, it said.
Taipower’s application would only be approved after the council ensures that the company fully explained the cause of the shutdown, it added.
Two foreign technicians who last week visited the plant to analyze the problem said that the pressure control system of the reactor’s steam valve was not set properly, causing it to trigger a protective shutdown once its operational output reached 30 percent, Taipower said yesterday.
The plant’s foreign fuel supplier on Saturday completed a simulation of the reactor’s operations and confirmed the safety of the reactor and its nuclear fuel rods, Taipower said.
Their conclusion corresponded with its own preliminary analysis, and their simulation assessment was included in the report to the council, the company said.
The nation’s operating power reserve is expected to be at “yellow” levels this week, because power reserves are at 7 percent, but are expected to drop to 5 percent in the second half of this month, it said.
That calculation does not include Guosheng’s No. 2 reactor, which could provide an additional 3 percent of power supply, the utility said, adding that it would respect the council’s decision on restarting the reactor.
Taipower uses a five-color system, with yellow the second-highest level, meaning that reserves are between 6 percent and 10 percent.
Black is the lowest level, indicating that reserves have fallen to less than 500,000 kilowatts, which would make power rationing necessary.
Additional reporting by staff writer
Taiwan has arranged for about 8 million barrels of crude oil, or about one-third of its monthly needs, to be shipped from the Red Sea this month to bypass the Strait of Hormuz and ease domestic supply pressures, CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) said yesterday. The state-run oil company has worked with Middle Eastern suppliers to secure routes other than the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas typically passes, CPC chairman Fang Jeng-zen (方振仁) said at a meeting of the legislature’s Economics Committee in Taipei. Suppliers in Saudi Arabia have indicated they
A global survey showed that 60 percent of Taiwanese had attained higher education, second only to Canada, the Ministry of the Interior said. Taiwan easily surpassed the global average of 43 percent and ranked ahead of major economies, including Japan, South Korea and the US, data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for 2024 showed. Taiwan has a high literacy rate, data released by the ministry showed. As of the end of last year, Taiwan had 20.617 million people aged 15 or older, accounting for 88.5 percent of the total population, with a literacy rate of 99.4 percent, the data
CCP ‘PAWN’? Beijing could use the KMT chairwoman’s visit to signal to the world that many people in Taiwan support the ‘one China’ principle, an academic said Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday arrived in China for a “peace” mission and potential meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), while a Taiwanese minister detailed the number of Chinese warships currently deployed around the nation. Cheng is visiting at a time of increased Chinese military pressure on Taiwan, as the opposition-dominated Legislative Yuan stalls a government plan for US$40 billion in extra defense spending. Speaking to reporters before going to the airport, Cheng said she was going on a “historic journey for peace,” but added that some people felt uneasy about her trip. “If you truly love Taiwan,
NEW LOW: The council in 2024 based predictions on a pessimistic estimate for the nation’s total fertility rate of 0.84, but last year that rate was 0.69, 17 percent lower An expected National Development Council (NDC) report expects the nation’s population to drop below 12 million by 2065, with the old-age dependency ratio to top 100 percent sooner than 2070, sources said yesterday. The council is slated to release its latest population projections in August, using an ultra-low fertility model, the sources said. The previous report projected that Taiwan’s population would fall to 14.37 million by 2070, but based on a new estimate of the total fertility rate (TFR) — the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime — the population is expected to reach 12 million by
RSS