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.
A 72-year-old man in Kaohsiung was sentenced to 40 days in jail after he was found having sex with a 67-year-old woman under a slide in a public park on Sunday afternoon. At 3pm on Sunday, a mother surnamed Liang (梁) was with her child at a neighborhood park when they found the man, surnamed Tsai (蔡), and woman, surnamed Huang (黃), underneath the slide. Liang took her child away from the scene, took photographs of the two and called the police, who arrived and arrested the couple. During questioning, Tsai told police that he had met Huang that day and offered to
LOOKING NORTH: The base would enhance the military’s awareness of activities in the Bashi Channel, which China Coast Guard ships have been frequenting, an expert said The Philippine Navy on Thursday last week inaugurated a forward operating base in the country’s northern most province of Batanes, which at 185km from Taiwan would be strategically important in a military conflict in the Taiwan Strait. The Philippine Daily Inquirer quoted Northern Luzon Command Commander Lieutenant General Fernyl Buca as saying that the base in Mahatao would bolster the country’s northern defenses and response capabilities. The base is also a response to the “irregular presence this month of armed” of China Coast Guard vessels frequenting the Bashi Channel in the Luzon Strait just south of Taiwan, the paper reported, citing a
BETTER SERVICE QUALITY: From Nov. 10, tickets with reserved seats would only be valid for the date, train and route specified on the ticket, THSRC said Starting on Nov. 10, high-speed rail passengers with reserved seats would be required to exchange their tickets to board an earlier train. Passengers with reserved seats on a specific train are currently allowed to board earlier trains on the same day and sit in non-reserved cars, but as this is happening increasingly often, and affecting quality of travel and ticket sales, Taiwan High-Speed Rail Corp (THSRC) announced that it would be canceling the policy on Nov. 10. It is one of several new measures launched by THSRC chairman Shih Che (史哲) to improve the quality of service, it said. The company also said
A magnitude 6 earthquake last night at 9:11pm struck off northeastern Yilan County, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The earthquake’s epicenter was located in waters between Toucheng Township (頭城) and Turtle Island (Gueishan Island, 龜山島), about 22.1km northeast of Yilan County Hall at a depth of 112km, CWA data showed. There were no immediate reports of damage. The earthquake’s intensity, which gauges the actual effects of a temblor, was highest in Yilan’s Dongshan (冬山) and Nanao (南澳) townships and Taipei’s Xinyi District (信義), where it measured 4 on Taiwan’s seven-tier intensity scale. It measured 3 in other areas of Yilan and Taipei, as