Anti-nuclear groups announced that they will hold a “Run Away From Nuclear” event on March 29 in Taipei as they performed a skit yesterday on Ketagalan Boulevard in which they pretended to flee radiation leaked from a nuclear power plant.
With the sound of nuclear alarm sirens in the background, performers wearing radiation suits put radioactive hazard trefoil stickers on signs with Taipei’s famous landmarks drawn on them to signify that all of Taipei could be contaminated if an accident occurred at one of the nuclear power plants in northern Taiwan.
Taiwan has three operational nuclear power plants — the Jinshan Nuclear Power Plant in Shihmen District (石門), New Taipei City (新北市), Guosheng Nuclear Power Plant in Wanli District (萬里), New Taipei City, and Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant in Ma-anshan (馬鞍山), Pingtung County.
Photo: CNA
The skit also included a person dressed in a panda costume to mimic the Taipei Zoo’s panda cub Yuan Zai (圓仔) and a person holding a picture of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), with a voice-over saying that even they could not escape from the radiation should an accident happen.
Anti-nuclear Alliance of Fathers convener Liou Gin-show (劉俊秀), a professor at National Chiao Tung University, said that according to his calculation, the occurrence rate of a nuclear disaster is about 1 in 500 — which is higher than the rate of winning NT$200 in the bimonthly Uniform-Invoice Lottery.
“If a nuclear disaster occurs at one of the plants, between 4 million and 5 million people would have to be evacuated from the Greater Taipei area, and that is only based on an evacuation ranging between 20km and 30km from the plants, not to say the 80km radius evacuation zone recommended by the US, and we do not even have the ability to evacuate 4 or 5 million people,” he said.
Anti-nuclear Alliance of Fathers executive director Kobe Chih (池國平) said the group decided to hold a run because fleeing is the first thing people would do in a nuclear accident, but “we also want the government to know that it is impossible to mount an effective response to a disaster when so many people are trying to flee at the same time.”
Taiwan Environmental Protection Union member and National Taiwan University’s atmospheric sciences professor Gloria Hsu (徐光蓉) said Taiwan is not short of power, because electricity generated by nuclear power accounts for only 6 percent of the total power supply, and can be replaced by improving electrical transmission efficiency or energy-conservation measures.
The groups urged the government to retire the three operational nuclear power plants as planned and stop constructing the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in Gongliao (貢寮), New Taipei City, to provide a safe, nuclear-free living environment for everyone.
The 7km running event will begin at 7am and start from Ketagalan Boulevard.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods