Tokyo-based Taiwanese writer Liu Li-erh (劉黎兒) yesterday in Taipei shared her latest fact-finding from Japan to say that now is the best time to put a halt to nuclear power in Taiwan.
Having lived in Tokyo for 30 years and experienced the devastating earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan on March 11 last year and led to the nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant, Liu said that more than 1 million Japanese continue to live in areas with high daily radiation exposure and the total cost of damage from the nuclear disaster is still too high to estimate.
“If nuclear power is not abolished, then our assets — especially those fixed assets in Taipei City and New Taipei City (新北市) — would be ‘abolished’ if a nuclear disaster occurs,” Liu told participants at a two-day forum on transforming Taiwan into a sustainable low-carbon environment.
Liu said that although her house is located about 80km away from the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant, the property has lost almost all of its value due to the high levels of radiation present since the disaster.
She said that the Japanese government had set provisional regulations for radiation-contaminated food at 500 Bq/kg for radioactive cesium levels immediately after the disaster, and reduced the limit to 100 Bq/kg in April. However, this is still 1,000 times the limit for rice (0.1 Bq/kg) in force prior to the disaster.
The Fukushima Dai-ichi catastrophe proved that sometimes even the government is unable to cope with the enormous damage from a nuclear meltdown, she said.
Many Japanese have learned from the disaster that “the knowledge of nuclear specialists is limited, they are not experts on evaluating the harm and impact that nuclear disasters can cause humans or society,” she said, adding: “So it becomes important to make judgements on our own, instead of always believing the government.”
Many experts from Japan and other countries are now very concerned about the more than 1,500 fuel rods housed in the storage pool inside the damaged No. 4 reactor building at Fukushima Dai-ichi, warning that a disaster worse than the three reactor meltdowns could happen if the pool collapses, she added.
“If the storage pool breaks and runs dry, the nuclear fuel inside will overheat and explode, causing a massive radiation release over a wide area,” she said.
Japan’s Mainichi Shimbun on April 2 said that “if this were to happen, residents in the Tokyo metropolitan area would be forced to evacuate.”
“Maybe some international experts have not noticed that we have about 8,000 spent fuel rods stored in the cooling pool at the Guosheng Nuclear Power Plant [in Wanli District (萬里), New Taipei City] and a total of about 16,000 throughout the country,” she said.
Taiwan has good reason to abandon all nuclear power operations because many international experts have already warned that the two nuclear power plants in northern Taiwan pose an immediate threat to greater Taipei, she said, adding that in February France’s Le Monde newspaper warned about the risk from poor management of spent fuel rods at the Guosheng plant.
Taiwan has a high reserve electricity capacity, so there would be no power shortage even if the nuclear power plants were immediately closed down, Liu said.
Many Japanese companies and government offices have saved up to 50 percent on their electricity consumption since the disaster, “so Taiwan can surely do the same to end our reliance on nuclear power,” she added.
GOOD DIPLOMACY: The KMT has maintained close contact with representative offices in Taiwan and had extended an invitation to Russia as well, the KMT said The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) would “appropriately handle” the fallout from an invitation it had extended to Russia’s representative to Taipei to attend its international banquet last month, KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) said yesterday. US and EU representatives in Taiwan boycotted the event, and only later agreed to attend after the KMT rescinded its invitation to the Russian representative. The KMT has maintained long-term close contact with all representative offices and embassies in Taiwan, and had extended the invitation as a practice of good diplomacy, Chu said. “Some EU countries have expressed their opinions of Russia, and the KMT respects that,” he
CHANGES: After-school tutoring periods, extracurricular activities during vacations or after-school study periods must not be used to teach new material, the ministry said The Ministry of Education yesterday announced new rules that would ban giving tests to most elementary and junior-high school students during morning study and afternoon rest periods. The amendments to regulations governing public education at elementary schools and junior high schools are to be implemented on Aug. 1. The revised rules stipulate that schools are forbidden to use after-school tutoring periods, extracurricular activities during summer or winter vacation or after-school study periods to teach new course material. In addition, schools would be prohibited from giving tests or exams to students in grades one to eight during morning study and afternoon break periods, the
Advocates of the rights of motorcycle and scooter riders yesterday protested in front of the Ministry of Transportation and Communications in Taipei, making three demands. They were joined by 30 passenger vehicles, which surrounded the ministry to make three demands related to traffic regulations — that motorcycles and scooters above 250cc be allowed on highways, that all motorcycles and scooters be allowed on inside lanes, and that driver and rider training programs be reformed. The ministry said that it has no plans to allow motorcycles on national highways for the time being, and said that motorcycles would be allowed on the inner
AMENDMENT: Contact with certain individuals in China, Hong Kong and Macau must be reported, and failure to comply could result in a prison sentence, the proposal stated The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) yesterday voted against a proposed bill by Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers that would require elected officials to seek approval before visiting China. DPP Legislator Puma Shen’s (沈伯洋) proposed amendments to the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), stipulate that contact with certain individuals in China, Hong Kong and Macau should be reported, while failure to comply would be punishable by prison sentences of up to three years, alongside a fine of NT$10 million (US$309,041). Fifty-six voted with the TPP in opposition