Following a draft proposal to bring forward the dates on which the nation's active nuclear power plants will be decommissioned, workers from Taiwan Power Company (Taipower, 台電) said yesterday that they would do their best to resist the plan in order to protect their right to employment.
On July 22, a Chinese-language media report said the First Nuclear Power Plant would be taken off-line by 2004, 14 years before its 40-year lifespan was scheduled to come to an end.
But Taipower officials refuted the report last week by saying that, so far, no timetable had been set for decommissioning the nation's three operating nuclear power plants. More than 100 of the state-run company's workers, however, protested against any such possible moves in front of the Legislative Yuan yesterday.
Later, at a public hearing held by two PFP lawmakers, Lin Hui-kuan (林惠官) and Yin Nai-ping (殷乃平), workers from the nuclear plant demanded a clear promise from the management of Taipower that their jobs will be protected.
"The salaries of 530 workers at the First Nuclear Power Plant would be directly affected if the proposed legislation goes through," said Wu Cheng-tai (吳振台), director-general of Taipower's labor union of 27,000 members.
Wu added that, from an economic vantage point, the plant is now only 24 years old and to close it down 14 years ahead of schedule doesn't make economic sense.
"Decommissioning the plant 14 years too soon is a waste of taxpayers' money," he said.
Wu said that the plant is currently actually making money for the state-owned power supplier. According to him, the cost of each unit of electricity generated by the plant is "only NT$0.4858, far less than the NT$1.92 of fuel-generated electricity and the NT$2.75 of natural-gas generated electricity."
Wu argued that if the nation replaces the First Nuclear Power Plant with power plants that burn natural gas, "each year the cost would be NT$20 billion more" than if the plant was allowed to complete its expected life span.
According to Wu's calculations, the total financial loss caused by retiring the nuclear plant 14 years earlier would be about NT$300 billion. He did not include in his calculations the cost of storing radioactive nuclear waste, nor the cost of medical treatment in the case of eventual radiation leakage into ground water and sea water.
Representatives of the labor union said that decommissioning nuclear plants earlier is an irresponsible idea because, technologically speaking, Taiwan's ability to carry out the decommissioning process is not well-developed.
"For example, where do we put the radioactive waste that is currently stored at the plant?" Wu said.
Taipower Vice President Tsai Mao-tsun (蔡茂村), however, said workers should not overreact because the draft bill is still far from going through.
The idea of retiring the plants early was first raised in February last year, when the Cabinet announced it was reversing an earlier decision to halt construction on the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant.
At that time, the Cabinet said it would decommission all of the first three nuclear power plants seven years earlier -- in 2011, 2014 and 2017, respectively.
But the Cabinet's latest proposal wants the timetable moved up to 2004, 2008 and 2011, respectively.
The labor union's Wu told the Taipei Times that, if the proposal is accepted, more than 1,700 workers from the three active nuclear plants would be mobilized by the union to protest for their right to work.
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