Officials of the Atomic Energy Council (AEC) said yesterday that the agency would not back a Taiwan Power Company (Taipower) initiative to build the nation's first final repository for low-level radioactive waste on a remote islet in Wuchiu (烏坵) township, Kinmen County. The officials said difficulties pertaining to logistics and supervision made the site impractical.
When examining a draft of the Radioactive Substances Act proposed by the AEC yesterday, lawmakers questioned the council's supervision of Taipower and its management of radioactive waste.
Answering KMT lawmaker Wang Yu-ting (
"For example, the distances involved would make it difficult for us to supply and supervise the repository," Ouyang said.
Ouyang said that the council wished to base such facilities on Taiwan proper rather than on a remote islet and wishes to complete the task within 10 years.
AEC officials have hinted since early last month to the effect that Taipower should give up the idea of building a repository in Wuchiu. It was then that residents of Orchid Island carried out a series of dramatic protests in opposition to an interim radioactive repository.
The demonstrations prompted the Cabinet to look into relocating the 97,672 barrels of low-level radioactive waste.
Taipower then floated the idea of locating the new repository on a remote islet in Wuchiu as a possible solution.
AEC officials stressed several times this month, however, that the islet's proximity to China might cause unforseeable problems, such as possible claims for compensation by fishermen working in waters nearby.
On May 15, AEC Vice Chairman Chen Kuo-cheng (
On May 20, AEC Vice Chairman Chiou Syh-tsong (
AEC officials, however, said that the council had no reason to notify Taipower of the idea, because Taipower had not submitted a proposal to build a final repository to the council.
The plan is currently being processed both by the Environmental Protection Administration for the environmental impact assessment and by the Ministry of Economic Affairs for a feasibility assessment.
In addition, legislators yesterday urged the AEC to more carefully supervise spent nuclear fuel from commercial nuclear power plants and to take more of a long term view about what to do with it. Currently, highly-radioactive spent fuel is stored at the three nuclear power-plant sites.
"The AEC should ask the US, the producer of the fuel, to retrieve spent fuel for further treatment," said DPP Legislator Lai Chin-lin (
Responding to Lai, Ouyand said that Taiwan had expressed the idea to the US. The international community, however, was promoting regional cooperation to handle spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste.
Several countries having small nuclear programs face the same problems of storing and disposing of spent fuel. From an economic point of view, many countries see little sense in building their own storage facilities.
Ouyang said that the International Atomic Energy Agency had started to collect and evaluate plans for on a regional spent fuel storage facility.
"We still have to work to join such programs to solve problems pertaining to the storage and disposal of spent nuclear fuel," Ouyang said.
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
HOSPITALITY HIT: Hotels in Hualien have an occupancy rate of 10 percent, down from 30 percent before the earthquake, a Tourism Administration official said The Executive Yuan yesterday unveiled a stimulus package of vouchers and subsidies to revive tourism in Hualien County following a quake measuring 7.2 on the Richter scale. The tremor on April 3, which killed at least 17 people and left two others missing, caused the county an estimated NT$3 billion (US$92.7 million) in damages. The Ministry of Economic Affairs is to issue vouchers worth NT$200 at the price of NT$100 for purchases at the Dongdamen Night Market (東大門夜市) in Hualien City to boost spending, a ministry official told a news conference after a Cabinet meeting in Taipei. The ministry plans to issue 18,400