Building a nuclear-free environment remains the government’s ultimate goal, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said yesterday, while insisting that the controversial construction of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in Gongliao District (貢寮), New Taipei City (新北市), should be resolved via a national referendum.
“The government’s consistent stance on nuclear power issues is to communicate with the people and listen to different voices. We hope that people can obtain all the information they need and understand their responsibilities before casting their votes in the referendum,” he said while meeting with US-based electrical power expert Chen Mo-shing (陳謨星) in the Presidential Office.
Chen has warned that the price of nuclear power in Taiwan has been greatly underestimated and the government’s claim that electricity prices would rise if the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant did not go into operation was “a lie.”
Photo: AFP
The Ma administration has said that the electricity production per megawatt-hour at the nation’s three operational nuclear power plants costs under NT$1 and that it would cost less than NT$2 at the fourth plant.
Ma yesterday said the government would work to build a nuclear-free homeland, and the key issue is how to reach the goal without limiting the use of electricity or raising electricity prices unreasonably.
The nation is divided as to whether nuclear power should be used, and international nuclear power experts also shared different views, he said.
City University of Hong Kong president Way Kuo (郭位), who was invited by the Presidential Office last week to give a speech on the development of nuclear power, for example, said that while nuclear power sources accounted for 13 percent of energy globally, coal-fired power, which is responsible for 40 percent of global energy, is the most dangerous energy source, because more than 100,000 deaths occur every year due to mining accidents.
“We invite different experts to share their opinions with us and through debates on nuclear power, we hope the people would understand the choices of alternative energies for us, and the price we need to pay to build a nuclear-free homeland,” Ma said.
In related news, the Executive Yuan’s Referendum Review Committee is slated to review a referendum proposal tomorrow that was initiated by former vice president Annette Lu (呂秀蓮).
The proposed referendum, endorsed by more than 51,000 New Taipei City (新北市) residents, asks the question: “Do you agree that fuel rods should be placed in the reactors at Taiwan Power Co’s Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City?”
It has passed a review by the city’s referendum review committee, but still requires the approval of the Executive Yuan’s Referendum Review Committee.
- Additional reporting by Chiu Yen-ling
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
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
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater