Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) said yesterday it is still considering filing an appeal against a court ruling it lost after the Atomic Energy Council (AEC) charged the firm with making arbitrary changes to the design of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in Gongliao District (貢寮), New Taipei City (新北市).
The Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) reported yesterday that the Taipei High Administrative Court ruled against Taipower in an administrative lawsuit against the AEC, which imposed a fine of NT$15 million (US$500,000) on Taipower for violating Article 14 of the Nuclear Reactor Facilities Control Act (核子反應器設施管制法).
It said the AEC discovered that Taipower had arbitrarily altered as many as 700 parts of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant design, starting in 2010.
The Liberty Times report also said that Taipower claimed the changes had to be made as the result of a contract dispute with US-based General Electric, the plant’s designer, and that they would not affect safety at the plant, but that the court did not accept the company’s explanation.
In response to the court ruling, Taipower chief nuclear energy engineer and spokesperson Chai Fu-feng (蔡富豐) said the company had not decided whether it would appeal the ruling and that most of the changes made to the design had been approved by the original manufacturer.
“They [General Electric] have approved most of our methods [for altering the design],” Chai said, adding that the changes had been made before General Electric could review them because Taipower did not want to set back the construction schedule and that about 97 percent of the alterations had since been approved by the US firm.
Taipower is still communicating with General Electric on the other 3 percent, Chai said.
In addition, Taipower said it has already asked specialists to conduct a safety risk assessment on the altered design of the nuclear power plant to ensure that it is safe.
More than half of the bamboo vipers captured in Tainan in the past few years were found in the city’s Sinhua District (新化), while other districts had smaller catches or none at all. Every year, Tainan captures about 6,000 snakes which have made their way into people’s homes. Of the six major venomous snakes in Taiwan, the cobra, the many-banded krait, the brown-spotted pit viper and the bamboo viper are the most frequently captured. The high concentration of bamboo vipers captured in Sinhua District is puzzling. Tainan Agriculture Bureau Forestry and Nature Conservation Division head Chu Chien-ming (朱健明) earlier this week said that the
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
Kenting National Park service technician Yang Jien-fon (楊政峰) won a silver award in World Grand Prix Photography Awards Spring Season for his photograph of two male rat snakes intertwined in combat. Yang’s colleagues at Kenting National Park said he is a master of nature photography who has been held back by his job in civil service. The awards accept entries in all four seasons across six categories: architectural and urban photography, black-and-white and fine art photography, commercial and fashion photography, documentary and people photography, nature and experimental photography, and mobile photography. Awards are ranked according to scores and divided into platinum, gold and
The first bluefin tuna of the season, brought to shore in Pingtung County and weighing 190kg, was yesterday auctioned for NT$10,600 (US$333.5) per kilogram, setting a record high for the local market. The auction was held at the fish market in Donggang Fishing Harbor, where the Siaoliouciou Island-registered fishing vessel Fu Yu Ching No. 2 delivered the “Pingtung First Tuna” it had caught for bidding. Bidding was intense, and the tuna was ultimately jointly purchased by a local restaurant and a local company for NT$10,600 per kilogram — NT$300 ,more than last year — for a total of NT$2.014 million. The 67-year-old skipper
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