As there is not enough information on the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s (新北市) Gongliao District (貢寮) at present, the National Science Council will provide the necessary scientific information to the Ministry of Economic Affairs according to its needs, council Minister Cyrus Chu (朱敬一) said yesterday.
Lawmakers at the legislature’s Education and Culture Committee meeting yesterday questioned Chu about nuclear power issues, including his understanding about earthquakes caused by movements along a blind thrust fault like the magnitude 6.1 earthquake last week and how they would affect the power plant, as well as Chu’s attitude and the council’s role in the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant issue.
An official from the National Center for Research on Earthquake Engineering said that hundreds of earthquake monitoring stations had been installed across the nation, especially along fault lines, and the center has also begun conducting research on the nuclear power plants’ ability to withstand earthquakes in 2011.
However, there is no information yet on the anti-seismic capabilities of the still-to-be-completed power plant, the official said.
When asked by Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator He Hsin-chun (何欣純) whether he would vote in the referendum to decide the fate of the nuclear power plant, Chu said: “Because there is not enough information on the issue, I will not vote.”
DPP Legislator Chen Ting-fei (陳亭妃) said if all officials chose not to vote, they would be doing what the Cabinet wants, because the referendum would not be able to pass the required 50 percent threshold and the plant would therefore be able to go into operation.
Chen added that it was not appropriate for officials to have doubts because of the lack of information.
Chu said voting is a personal decision that he would be making as a citizen, but that he hoped enough information on the issue would be available before the referendum takes place.
He added that the council has informed the ministry that it would assist in scientific research analysis on subjects such as geology, construction structure or tsunamis.
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:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
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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