Chances of radioactive contaminants from Japan’s damaged nuclear reactors reaching Taiwan through wind or ocean currents are slim and no such substance has been detected in waters near Taiwan so far, coast guard authorities said yesterday.
“Judging from the direction of the Kuroshio Current that passes off the east coast of Taiwan and flows northward to Japan, such a possibility is low,” said Hung Shih-chun (洪世俊), captain of the northern branch of the Coast Guard Administration.
So far, everything is normal in waters off the northern coast and no radioactive contaminants have been discovered in that area, coastal patrollers have said.
Following the leakage of radiation from Japan’s Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, Taiwan’s coast guard, in conjunction with Atomic Energy Council (AEC) personnel, have stepped up patrols within Taiwan’s territorial waters to better detect whether radiation levels near the country’s coastlines are within safe limits.
Director-general of Keelung Harbor Bureau Lu Chan-yu (盧展猷) said that chances are small that contaminated materials would drift toward Taiwan from Japan.
Workers in the area would immediately detect debris flowing from Japan that may carry radioactive substances if they are found drifting near the port, Lu said.
Beginning on Friday, passenger boats from Japan that seek to dock at Keelung Harbor are required to give the country’s top nuclear safety regulator seven days advance notice.
The Keelung Harbor Bureau, which received the new instruction from AEC on Friday, said the advanced notification would enable the regulator to send personnel to the port to scan boats for radiation.
The new instruction came after the massive March 11 earthquake and ensuing tsunami in Japan crippled the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, leading to releases of radiation that could get worse.
Keelung Harbor Master Hsu Wen-liang (徐文亮) said he hoped the AEC would not only scan passenger boats from Japan for radiation, but would also conduct inspections on cargo ships.
Hsu said that most passenger boats from Japan arrive without a fixed schedule, but cargo ships from Japan were still allowed to enter and leave port without being scanned.
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:
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