Several academics and members of the Antinuclear Action Alliance said yesterday that their proposal of initiating a national referendum to decide whether fuel rods should be inserted into the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant’s reactor has already reached the threshold of 100,000 signatures that are needed for a first-phase submission.
Kao Cheng-yan (高成炎), former Taiwan Environmental Protection Union chairperson, said the government and the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) decision on “ceasing construction” of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s Gongliao District (貢寮) is only playing with words, stalling for time and deceiving the public.
He said that because the Cabinet and KMT lawmakers are unwilling to amend the Referendum Act (公民投票法), which contains what he called “unreasonably high” thresholds, the alliance has instead initiated a national referendum proposal, with the question: “Do you agree on allowing Taiwan Power Co to insert fuel rods into the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City for a test run?”
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
“This is a question that is destined to stop nuclear power,” he said, adding that if a national plebiscite is held on this question, any eligible voter who does not vote would be considered against it.
“We have already received enough signatures for the first-phase threshold and we will submit it [to the Executive Yuan’s Referendum Review Committee] soon,” he said. “We cannot think of any reason for them to reject our proposal.”
Kao said that the union had previously submitted a petition to initiate a local referendum posing the same question, but it was rejected by the committee, claiming that the nuclear power plant is a nationwide public issue and should be decided on a national level.
Taiwan Association of University Professors deputy secretary-general Chien Wen-nan (錢文南) choked on tears as he said that former Democratic Progressive Party chairman Lin I-hsiung’s (林義雄) action of bowing to the tomb of his mother and twin daughters at a cemetery in Yilan on Monday is seen by Taiwanese as a sign of saying that he is about to leave this world.
“This is a critical point concerning a person’s life [Lin is now on the eighth day of his hunger strike], but the government still does not show any empathy,” he said. “He does not represent himself, he is representing the will of many Taiwanese... and he already has family members who have been murdered, please don’t let him sacrifice his life for Taiwanese.”
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
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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