Former vice president Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) yesterday said she would not give up her effort to initiate a local referendum to stop the installation of fuel rods in the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant if her appeal is rejected by the Taipei High Administrative Court next month.
Lu filed a provisional injunction in January after the Executive Yuan’s Referendum Review Committee in May last year rejected a proposal regarding the plant in New Taipei City’s Gongliao District (貢寮).
Oral arguments before the Taipei High Administrative Court ended yesterday and the court said it would issue a verdict on Aug. 5.
While most people assumed that the government had pledged to halt construction work on the power plant after former Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) chairman Lin I-hsiung’s (林義雄) hunger strike in April, President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration could resume construction any time, Lu told a press conference in Taipei.
“If Lin could risk his own life on the issue and force the government to announce the suspension, why can’t the 7.47 million people who reside in the plant’s mandatory evacuation zone decide their own fates?” Lu said.
The mandatory evacuation zone includes Taipei, New Taipei City, Keelung and Yilan County.
Referendum proposals in Taipei, New Taipei City and Yilan County passed the petition threshold and were approved by the respective referendum review committees of both cities and Yilan County, but they were rejected by the Executive Yuan, which said the future of the controversial plant was an important national policy matter not suitable for local referendums.
Members of the Executive Yuan Referendum Review Committee were appointed by Ma, Lu said.
The central government is not justified in taking the right to hold a referendum away from those who live in the mandatory evacuation zone, she added.
If the administrative court rejects the appeal, Lu said she is considering asking DPP lawmakers to initiate another referendum proposal in the legislature that would cover the cities and counties in the mandatory evacuation zone.
Taiwan is to commence mass production of the Tien Kung (天弓, “Sky Bow”) III, IV and V missiles by the second quarter of this year if the legislature approves the government’s NT$1.25 trillion (US$39.78 billion) special defense budget, an official said yesterday. Commenting on condition of anonymity, a defense official with knowledge of the matter said that the advanced systems are expected to provide crucial capabilities against ballistic and cruise missiles for the proposed “T-Dome,” an advanced, multi-layered air defense network. The Tien Kung III is an air defense missile with a maximum interception altitude of 35km. The Tien Kung IV and V
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Taiwan lacks effective and cost-efficient armaments to intercept rockets, making the planned “T-Dome” interception system necessary, two experts said on Tuesday. The concerns were raised after China’s military fired two waves of rockets during live-fire drills around Taiwan on Tuesday, part of two-day exercises code-named “Justice Mission 2025.” The first wave involved 17 rockets launched at 9am from Pingtan in China’s Fujian Province, according to Lieutenant General Hsieh Jih-sheng (謝日升) of the Office of the Deputy Chief of the General Staff for Intelligence at the Ministry of National Defense. Those rockets landed 70 nautical miles (129.6km) northeast of Keelung without flying over Taiwan,
A strong continental cold air mass is to bring pollutants to Taiwan from tomorrow, the Ministry of Environment said today, as it issued an “orange” air quality alert for most of the country. All of Taiwan except for Hualien and Taitung counties is to be under an “orange” air quality alert tomorrow, indicating air quality that is unhealthy for sensitive groups. In China, areas from Shandong to Shanghai have been enveloped in haze since Saturday, the ministry said in a news release. Yesterday, hourly concentrations of PM2.5 in these areas ranged from 65 to 160 micrograms per cubic meter (mg/m³), and pollutants were
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