The government has never rejected any budget application for the construction of Taiwan's Fourth Nuclear Power Plant, the Executive Yuan said yesterday.
"We are reviewing and considering the latest budget application for the construction, which is for NT$54.3 billion (US$1.7 billion), . We haven't rejected any budget application, so the construction is on schedule," Government Information Office Minister and Cabinet Spokesman Cheng Wen-tsang (
Cheng made the remarks in response to reporters' enquiries on a story published by the local Chinese-language newspaper the China Times yesterday.
The story reported that "the construction of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant will be interrupted by the end of May because the remaining NT$5 billion budget will be used up by then." Cheng yesterday said that the construction budget for the power plant was divided into several segments.
"It means that the contractor will not ask for the total cost of construction. Instead, it files applications requesting funding period by period as the construction is undertaken," Cheng said.
The minister said the remaining budget will not be used up before July. However, the Cabinet will definitely finish its reviewing and consideration of further funding allowances before current allocated funds are used up, he added.
"I think that the press is again mistaken. A business task force led by Vice Premier Tsai Ing-wen (
The Fourth Nuclear Power Plant is located in Gongliao Township (貢寮), Taipei County, approximately 40km from Taipei City.
The construction of the plant began in 1993 and was scheduled for completion in July, 2009. The government has to date spent a total of NT$140.4 billion on its construction. In 1999, Su, who was then Taipei County commissioner, asked Taiwan Power Co to suspend the construction of the plant for two years as a punishment because of accusations of environmental devastation in its construction.
Information from the Cabinet showed that an estimated NT$243 billion was needed to complete the construction of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant, making it the most expensive nuclear power plant in the world.
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
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not