Atomic Energy Council (AEC) Chairman Tsai Chuen-horng (蔡春鴻) said on Monday that Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) had delayed naming its final potential disposal sites for low-level radioactive waste by five months beyond a legally mandated deadline.
As the body in charge of a statute governing the final disposal site of the waste, Tsai said the AEC has sent letters to the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Taipower asking for an explanation.
The AEC is in the process of gathering information and dealing with questions concerning related laws, Tsai said, adding that Taipower had sent a report at the end of February on its progress in choosing the final disposal sites.
“The choice of the final disposal sites has to be made, not only because the statute has cleared the Legislative Yuan, but because of the safety of radioactive waste and the government’s pledge to the residents of Lanyu [also known as Orchid Island],” he said.
The disposal site on Lanyu mainly accepts low-level solidified radioactive waste from the medical, agricultural, industrial and academic sectors as well as from nuclear power plants.
The site began to operate in May 1982 and stopped accepting additional nuclear waste in April 1996. A total of 97,672 barrels are stored in 23 trenches on the island.
Faced with the island’s high temperatures, humidity and salty air, some barrels storing the waste showed signs of corrosion early this year, prompting the AEC to request that Taipower re-examine them as soon as possible.
Reports said that Taipower has chosen four possible sites — Mudan Township in Pingtung County, Daren and Dawu townships in Taitung County and Wanan Township on Penghu — for the final storage site.
The first three townships agreed to allow Taipower to conduct geological surveys, but as the law stipulates that the establishment of the site would require the consent of county residents through a local referendum and not just the consent of township residents, Taipower “dared not” conduct the surveys, the reports said.
Although Taipower favors Penghu’s Wanan Township, the county commissioner, councilors and village chief have all voiced strong opposition to the plan.
The new location will receive the waste currently stored on Lanyu and at Taipower’s three nuclear power plants.
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