Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) and the government should not presume that nuclear power is the only energy choice, Academia Sinica researcher Yen Hung-yang (嚴宏洋) said yesterday, calling on the government to look into other options, otherwise it would be difficult for Taiwan to shoulder the consequences should anything untoward happen at any of the nation’s nuclear power plants.
Yen pointed to a decision by German Chancellor Angela Merkel — who is a physicist specializing in nuclear physics — to halve the use of nuclear power in Germany, adding that two months after the Fukushima Dai-ichi disaster in Japan, Germany closed down eight of its 17 nuclear power plants.
Germany is highly industrialized, and it logically places an emphasis on the provision of sufficient energy to its citizens, Yen said, adding that Merkel had the guts to order an immediate halt to over half of the nation’s supply of nuclear energy because the German government had started investing in green energy over two decades ago.
Wind-power generators are almost ubiquitous in Germany, and most houses have solar panels on their roofs, Yen said, adding that the ratio of green energy output in Germany exceeded 20 percent of the entire national power grid.
Taiwan meets the prerequisites for generating green energy, and while it lacks the sheer land mass of Germany, southern Taiwan is almost permanently bathed in sunlight, while western, northwestern and eastern Taiwan offer excellent locations for wind power turbines, Yen said.
The government could even choose to construct offshore wind turbines, he said, adding that while it might drive overhead costs up, locating turbines offshore would free land for other uses and address the problem of noise generated by the turbines.
Most importantly wind power does not cause pollution, Yen said.
“Our ancestors were wise enough to leave us with the adage ‘Don’t put all your eggs in one basket’ and it’s time the government started looking at alternatives to nuclear power,” Yen said.
The Fourth Nuclear Power Plant is a mishmash of different parts, and the quality of Taiwan’s public construction has always been questionable, Yen said, adding that he did not understand why the government was set on constructing the power plant.
“It might be that some people stand to gain from the construction, but Taiwan does not have the capital to survive a nuclear disaster,” Yen said, adding that if an incident similar to the one that occurred at Fukushima happened in Taiwan, the island would be finished.
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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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