President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday defended his administration’s efforts to ensure the safety of nuclear power plants, citing major precautionary measures at the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s (新北市) Gongliao District (貢寮) that include destroying the plant if necessary to prevent a nuclear disaster.
Ma, during a meeting with a group of Japanese academics and engineers in the Presidential Office, said the disaster at Japan’s Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant has prompted Taiwan to examine the reasons behind the disaster and enhance the safety measures at its plants.
At the controversial Fourth Nuclear Power Plant, Ma said a system was established to destroy the plant if a disaster is about to happen.
“We can destroy the whole plant to avoid radiation leaks if the situation is about to go out of control. We firmly believe that no nuclear power should exist without nuclear safety,” he said.
Ma said that such a measure, which could be completed in 46 minutes, showed the government’s dedication to strengthening safety measures at nuclear power plants, as it continues its efforts to steadily reduce the use of nuclear power and eventually build a nuclear-free homeland.
Of the nation’s electricity supply, 40 percent comes from fossil fuels, 30 percent from natural gas and 18.5 percent from nuclear power. The rest is supplied by alternative energy sources.
Japan and Taiwan share the problem that most of their energy resources are imported, and the two nations cannot give up any energy resource, he said.
The construction of the plant has sparked waves of protests from anti-nuclear activists. The Ma administration has been pushing for the continued construction of the plant, while promising that the government would allow the public to decide via a referendum whether the construction should continue.
China has reserved offshore airspace in the Yellow Sea and East China Sea from March 27 to May 6, issuing alerts usually used to warn of military exercises, although no such exercises have been announced, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported yesterday. Reserving such a large area for 40 days without explanation is an “unusual step,” as military exercises normally only last a few days, the paper said. These alerts, known as Notice to Air Missions (Notams), “are intended to inform pilots and aviation authorities of temporary airspace hazards or restrictions,” the article said. The airspace reserved in the alert is
NAMING SPAT: The foreign ministry called on Denmark to propose an acceptable solution to the erroneous nationality used for Taiwanese on residence permits Taiwan has revoked some privileges for Danish diplomatic staff over a Danish permit that lists “Taiwan” as “China,” Eric Huang (黃鈞耀), head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Department of European Affairs, told a news conference in Taipei yesterday. Reporters asked Huang whether the Danish government had responded to the ministry’s request that it correct the nationality on Danish residence permits of Taiwanese, which has been listed as “China” since 2024. Taiwan’s representative office in Denmark continues to communicate with the Danish government, and the ministry has revoked some privileges previously granted to Danish representatives in Taiwan and would continue to review
More than 6,000 Taiwanese students have participated in exchange programs in China over the past two years, despite the Mainland Affairs Council’s (MAC) “orange light” travel advisory, government records showed. The MAC’s publicly available registry showed that Taiwanese college and university students who went on exchange programs across the Strait numbered 3,592 and 2,966 people respectively. The National Immigration Agency data revealed that 2,296 and 2,551 Chinese students visited Taiwan for study in the same two years. A review of the Web sites of publicly-run universities and colleges showed that Taiwanese higher education institutions continued to recruit students for Chinese educational programs without
A bipartisan group of US senators has introduced a bill to enhance cooperation with Taiwan on drone development and to reduce reliance on supply chains linked to China. The proposed Blue Skies for Taiwan Act of 2026 was introduced by Republican US senators Ted Cruz and John Curtis, and Democratic US senators Jeff Merkley and Andy Kim. The legislation seeks to ease constraints on Taiwan-US cooperation in uncrewed aerial systems (UAS), including dependence on China-sourced components, limited access to capital and regulatory barriers under US export controls, a news release issued by Cruz on Wednesday said. The bill would establish a "Blue UAS
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