Former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) yesterday said Taiwan could not afford to abandon nuclear power in the near future and should enhance its nuclear energy program by developing advanced technologies, such as nuclear fusion.
“Taiwanese scientists should work on nuclear fusion research and engineering to explore new methods to replace current technologies, which are based on nuclear fission, and are a by-product of the Manhattan Project developed during World War II,” Lee said on the second day of a two-day visit to Hsinchu County.
While the nation is embroiled in the debate over the construction of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s (新北市) Gongliao District (貢寮), and nuclear technology does pose threats of radiation leaks and other risks to human health, theproduction of nuclear energy is not all bad, he said.
There are alternative ways to generate nuclear electricity, but no one in Taiwan was willing to discuss them, he said.
The nuclear-free homeland initiative promoted by several politicians, such as former Democratic Progressive Party chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), is well-intentioned, Lee said, but Taiwan is unlikely to secure sufficient electricity supplies from alternative energy sources with its high dependence on imported oil and gas.
Wind and solar sources of energy both have limitations and could not fill the void left by nuclear power, he said.
Between now and the implementation of nuclear fusion projects, biomass energy would be a good option to meet the nation’s electricity demand, as more than 200,000 hectares of fallow land could be used to plant sugarcane or corn to produce alcohol fuel, which is a mature and widespread technology used in countries such as Brazil, he said.
Lee said he would not participate in the government’s proposed referendum on continuing the construction of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant.
Commenting on the fisheries agreement signed by Taiwan and Japan on Wednesday, which assured Taiwanese vessels a larger intervention-free fishing zone around the Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台), Lee said the agreement would benefit Taiwanese fishermen in operating in fishing grounds they have worked for more than a century.
Lee he was glad that the agreement had finally been signed 17 years after negotiations began, and said that Japan had made concessions in the talks for a number of reasons.
Japan would like to strengthen its partnership with Taiwan in the wake of heightened tensions with China over the Diaoyutais, Lee said, adding that it also might feel like it needs to repay Taiwanese for the huge donations they made after a tsunami and earthquake rocked Japan in March 2011.
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