Environmentalists said yesterday that the Cabinet reshuffle was a further blow to the anti-nuclear movement, saying that the newly appointed heads of both the Atomic Energy Council (AEC) and the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) were not the right people for the jobs.
Activists said that they were opposed to incoming AEC chairman Hu Chin-piao (
"He totally ignored Taipower's (
The Control Yuan censured the Executive Yuan, the AEC, the EPA and Taipower in April 1999 because of the AEC's failure to follow the correct procedures when it issued the license.
In September 1995, the Control Yuan censured seven Cabinet agencies involved with the change in power output of the reactors. But the censure was totally ignored by the Cabinet.
In May 1999, the same seven agencies, including the EPA and the AEC, were again censured by the Control Yuan for failing to address the 1995 censures.
Yesterday, AEC officials said that they welcomed Hu's return, saying that Hu was very familiar with atomic energy-related administrative matters.
Meanwhile, Chou Po-lun (
Activists said Hau was unqualified for the job, having been trained in food science and technology, in which he holds a doctoral degree, rather than environmental science.
Hau currently teaches at the Graduate Institute of Food Science and Technology at National Taiwan University as well as being a legislator and a key New party functionary.
On Sunday, Hau stated that he supported the Cabinet's decision to resume construction of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant.
Pan said that outgoing EPA head Lin Jun-yi (
Lin has been an energetic pioneer in the anti-nuclear movement in Taiwan since the 1980s.
In his well-known book, Opposing Nuclear Energy to Oppose Dictatorship (
During Lin's nine-month leadership of the EPA, he promoted alternative sources of energy, such as solar energy and wind energy.
Accompanied by US oil cleanup experts from Alaska, Lin yesterday inspected the half-sunk Greek cargo ship MV Amorgos, which caused an oil spill in Kenting National Park in southern Taiwan in mid-January.
It was the handling of the oil spill which eventually triggered the Cabinet's reshuffle, leading to Lin's ouster.
"I'll keep going with the oil cleanup work until I step down," Lin said yesterday.
Both the AEC and EPA posts will change hands tomorrow.
‘UNFRIENDLY’: Changing the nationality listing of Taiwanese residents to ‘China’ goes against EU foreign policy as well as democratic and human rights principles, MOFA said Taiwan yesterday called on Denmark to correct its designation of the nationality of Taiwanese residents as “China” or face retaliatory measures. The Danish government in 2024 changed the nationality of Taiwanese citizens on their residence permits from “Taiwan” to “China.” The decision goes against EU foreign policy and contravenes democratic and human rights principles, Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) spokesman Hsiao Kuang-wei (蕭光偉) said. Denmark should present a solution acceptable to Taiwan as soon as possible and correct the erroneous designation to preserve the longstanding friendship between the two nations, Hsiao said. The issue could damage Denmark’s image and business reputation in Taiwan,
The nation’s fastest supercomputer, Nano 4 (晶創26), is scheduled to be launched in the third quarter, and would be used to train large language models in finance and national defense sectors, the National Center for High-Performance Computing (NCHC) said. The supercomputer, which would operate at about 86.05 petaflops, is being tested at a new cloud computing center in the Southern Taiwan Science Park in Tainan. The exterior of the server cabinet features chip circuitry patterns overlaid with a map of Taiwan, highlighting the nation’s central position in the semiconductor industry. The center also houses Taiwania 2, Taiwania 3, Forerunner 1 and
Taiwan climbed to its highest position in global export rankings in more than three decades last year, buoyed by demand linked to artificial intelligence (AI) that lifted shipments of semiconductors and technology products, Ministry of Finance data released yesterday showed. Taiwan accounted for 2.4 percent of global exports last year, or about US$640 billion, ranking 12th worldwide, the data showed. That was up four places from a year earlier and marked the nation’s best ranking since 1994, the ministry said. Taiwan’s share of global exports rose by 0.5 percentage points from the previous year, the largest increase among major economies, reflecting the nation’s
FIRST TRIAL: Ko’s lawyers sought reduced bail and other concessions, as did other defendants, but the bail judge denied their requests, citing the severity of the sentences Former Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) was yesterday sentenced to 17 years in prison and had his civil rights suspended for six years over corruption, embezzlement and other charges. Taipei prosecutors in December last year asked the Taipei District Court for a combined 28-year, six-month sentence for the four cases against Ko, who founded the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP). The cases were linked to the Core Pacific City (京華城購物中心) redevelopment project and the mismanagement of political donations. Other defendants convicted on separate charges included Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei City Councilor Angela Ying (應曉薇), who was handed a 15-year, six-month sentence; Core Pacific
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