Legislators slammed Taiwan Power Company (Taipower) yesterday for adopting unsatisfactory levels of earthquake resistance at two warehouses being built to store low-level radioactive waste in Taipei County.
The warehouses will be used to hold waste generated by two nuclear plants in the area. Each can store up to 40,000 barrels of waste and are expected to open in 2004, according to Taipower.
The construction work, however, is worrying nearby Chinshan (
Yesterday, Taipei County PFP Legislator Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) spoke up for residents, saying Taipower has set the levels of seismic resistance too low
"The two warehouses for low-level radioactive waste are regarded by Taipower as special buildings, which are required to meet less strict building codes than nuclear plants do," Lee said.
Lee said that Taipower has ignored safety considerations because the warehouses were designed to meet the seismic coefficient standard of 0.23g for special buildings in Taipei County.
In addition, Lee said, coefficients adopted by Taiwan's four nuclear power plants, which were between 0.3g and 0.4g, would fail to ensure public safety if a quake similar to the 921 earthquake, which registered 7.3 on the Richter scale and claimed more than 2,400 lives.
To be able to withstand an earthquake of that magnitude, Lee said, seismic coefficients should be increased to between 0.6g and 0.9g.
PFP Legislator Liu Wen-hsiung (劉文雄) from Keelung said that the government should not have allowed Taipower to build the warehouses.
"Obviously, the government did not learn any lessons from the 921 earthquake," he said.
Responding to the accusations, Taipower officials said that the warehouses' seismic coefficient of 0.24g would definitely ensure public safety.
"The warehouses will be home to stabilized low-level radioactive waste. We don't think they will pose any danger to residents," said the head of Taipower's public affairs department Huang Hui-yu (黃惠予).
According to Taipower, about 35,000 barrels of low-level radioactive waste are stored at the First Nuclear Power Plant and 38,000 barrels at the Second Nuclear Power Plant. Each nuclear plant generates about 600 barrels of low-level radioactive waste annually.
Environmentalists with the anti-nuclear Green Citizen Action Alliance told the Taipei Times yesterday that the nuclear plants should not have been built in Taiwan, a populous island sitting in an earthquake-prone zone.
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