The Green Citizens’ Action Alliance said yesterday that the conclusions of an international team of experts on Friday that the nation’s three operating nuclear power plants had passed a stress test were flawed, and that civic groups should be allowed to participate in the tests.
The assessment of the stress test reports of the three operating nuclear power plants, released by a peer review team from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Nuclear Energy Agency, concluded that, overall, the test was implemented properly and its measurements were adequate, with a few caveats.
The alliance, a civic environmental group that has been dedicated to campaigning against nuclear energy in favor of sustainable energy for many years, made the remarks in a press release yesterday, saying that the Atomic Energy Council’s (AEC) nuclear disaster risk calculation should be based on potential for danger, not on probabilistic risk assessment.
The reports provided by the AEC were insufficient and not up-to-date, because they did not include the possibility of the Shanchiao Fault (山腳斷層) causing earthquakes or tsunamis, nor did they use state-of-the-art modeling to analyze tsunami risks, the group said, adding that the AEC should also take the team’s recommendation about implementing a systematic evaluation of combinations of different hazards more seriously.
Moreover, in light of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant disaster in Japan, the AEC and Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) should not use the scale of “the most severe incident in history” as its calculation base for enhancement designs, but should be aware that there may be severe accidents beyond the design endurance standard, the group added.
The group said the AEC’s self-congratulatory attitude of boasting of the nuclear power plants’ good condition to the public may lead to nuclear accidents, because neither it nor Taipower have provided any data on the relationship between the Shanchiao fault and possible earthquakes that may cripple the plants, which geologists and environmental groups have often warned of.
It said that the stress tests should also include civic participation, to publicize the data for discussion and allow other specialists from other fields and civic groups to examine whether the tests were done with sufficient transparency.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift