New government agency to handle waste proposed

The establishment of a new government unit in charge of radioactive waste management might be a good idea to overcome the procrastination of building final repositories for existing radioactive waste in Taiwan, officials of the Atomic Energy Council (AEC) said yesterday.

"Many European countries, whose sizes are similar to Taiwan's, have established professional agencies governed by public authorities to design and implement appropriate systems for managing radioactive waste generated," Ray Wu (吳瑞堯), director of the AEC's department of planning, told the Taipei Times.

Wu said the agencies -- such as France's National Radioactive Waste Agency (ANDRA), Switzerland's National Cooperative for the Disposal of Radioactive Waste (NAGRA) and Sweden's Nuclear Power Inspectorate (SKI) -- are co-funded by the government and utilities and are highly efficient in handling high-level and low-level radioactive waste.

AEC officials believe that the delay in relocating 98,000 barrels of low-level radioactive waste stored at a interim repository on Orchid Island could be attributed to Taiwan Power Co's (Taipower) lax efforts in managing radioactive waste, because the nation's only electricity supplier focuses more on power generation.

If a government agency was established, AEC officials said, professional and sufficient staff would process radioactive waste management-related affairs more efficiently than Taipower.

In the draft of the Radioactive Waste Final Disposal Act recently revised by the AEC in June, the idea of forming a government agency to handle radioactive waste professionally was added.

In order to transfer the Cabinet's finalized Radioactive Waste Final Disposal Act to the Legislative Yuan in the next session beginning on Sept. 1, AEC officials said, the draft will be handed into the Cabinet for further finalization within weeks.

The inclusion of the idea to establish a government agency to manage radioactive waste into the draft, however, drew opposition from some high-ranking officials, including Minister Without Portfolio Yeh Jiunn-rong (葉俊榮), who is also executive director of a Cabinet committee to help slash the number of Cabinet administrative entities from 35 to 23.

Lin Ming-hsiung (林明雄), director of Taipower's Nuclear Backend Management Department, told the Taipei Times yesterday that a new agency at a higher level might have more flexible ways to employ sufficient staff than Taipower does.

Currently, Lin said, about 60 staff members at the department handle affairs relating to both radioactive waste management and the decommissioning of nuclear plants.

"However, we still are looking for an ideal site to build a final repository for radioactive waste," Lin said.

"The project to build one in Wuchiu (烏坵) township, Kinmen County, has not been abandoned."

Lin said that the future of the project would depend on the results of the environmental impact assessment by the Environmental Protection Administration and the feasibility assessment by the Commission of National Corporations under the Ministry of Economic Affairs.

But Lin said two groups formed by the Cabinet in May, the Orchid Island Nuclear Waste Relocation Promotion Committee and the Orchid Island Community Development Committee, had sped up processes to fulfill the government's promise made to people of Orchid Island: setting an acceptable timeframe to relocate radioactive waste.