Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) Chairman Lin Wen-yuan (林文淵) said yesterday that Taipower had signed an agreement with China several years ago, under which China was to store nuclear waste for Taiwan, but that the plan had proven to be unworkable because of cross-strait political problems.
Lin was speaking in response to a Chinese-language newspaper report that a Taiwanese consulting company had recently signed an agreement with China's Ministry of Nuclear Industry (中國核工業部) to allow China to store nuclear waste for Taiwan
A Chinese-language newspaper report published yesterday stated that China signed an agreement with Taiwan Technical Consultants Inc (台灣技術服務社) at the end of April for the removal of Tai-wanese nuclear waste to a storage site in China's Guangdong Province.
The report also stated that, as long as the Taiwanese government and Taipower agreed, the nuclear waste currently stored on Taiwan's outlying Orchid Island could be removed to China within 45 days of the agreement's enactment.
Lin, however, said that although Taipower had signed a similar agreement with China, cross-strait cooperation on the transportation of radioactive waste to China involved "sensitive and complicated" problems, regarding which there had been no major breakthrough in recent years.
"I doubt whether a private organization could make such a breakthrough," he said.
In addition, Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Vice Chairman Chen Ming-tong (陳明通) said yesterday that the MAC has not evaluated the possibility of moving the waste to China, saying that yesterday's news report was all he knew of the matter. "We can't make policy based simply on a newspaper report."
"We will try to understand the situation," he added. "If necessary, we will hold a cross-ministry meeting to evaluate whether it is feasible to transport the waste to China."
Chen made the statement in the Legislative Yuan while answering questions from KMT lawmaker Kwan Yuk-noan (關沃暖).
Kwan asked whether the government had contacted Chinese officials on the matter. Chen responded that he was "not sure."
"We can't give a concrete response since we don't have further information," Chen said.
"Since the DPP government took office, we have had no requests from other ministries to evaluate the possibility of sending nuclear waste to China."
The nuclear waste issue has been very prominent recently, particularly because of protests by residents of Orchid Island, especially members of the Aboriginal Yami tribe. President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and Taipower have promised to remove the waste from the island by the end of this year, but the company has said that it will be very difficult to meet the deadline.
The company still has to find an alternative repository to the one in Orchid Island. Sending the waste to other countries is one solution that the company has mooted.
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