The earthquake that hit Japan on Friday last week has provided additional ammunition to environmental activists who are worried that one of Taiwan’s nuclear power plants lies within an area known for its underwater volcanoes.
Lee Chao-shing (李昭興), a professor of applied geosciences at National Taiwan Ocean University, said last year that as many as 70 underwater volcanoes are located within an 80km radius of the soon-to-be-operational Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in Gongliao District (貢寮), New Taipei City (新北市).
Up to 11 of those volcanoes are active, Lee said.
Although atomic regulatory officials dismissed the risks, activists said the authorities should take another look in light of the nuclear incidents in Japan.
The volcanoes, which have the highest concentration near a nuclear plant in the world, could lead to “a serious disaster” in the event of an earthquake or tsunami on the scale of that that struck Japan last week, Lee said.
The extent of their activity can be seen by the nearby presence of crabs, he said, pointing to video that showed hundreds of the crustaceans crawling at the base of what Lee said was an underwater volcano.
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators demanded that the government stop work on the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant — also known as the Longmen plant — which is expected to come online this year or next year.
DPP Legislator Tien Chiu-chin (田秋堇) said the government should adopt a more cautious approach given the research findings, suggesting it was time it “stopped, looked and listened carefully.”
“The findings support ... the view that a natural disaster off Taiwan would have even more serious consequences than [what is happening] at Fukushima,” she said, referring to fears of two nuclear meltdowns at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in Japan.
Kao Cheng-yan (高成炎) of National Taiwan University, who is actively involved in the environmental movement, said the Longmen plant should not become operational.
“The reactors in the nuclear plant would be more unstable in the event of an earthquake. There are active volcanoes all around it,” he said.
Responding to the concerns, nuclear regulatory officials said the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant is safe, pointing to its location on stable bedrock and multiple backup systems, which officials say exceed those Japan had in place.
“We believe that [construction of] the fourth nuclear plant can continue as planned,” Taiwan Power Co chairman Edward Chen (陳貴明) said.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS