An environmental group said yesterday that it would initiate a second referendum aimed at curbing the nation’s use of nuclear power following the rejection of its previous proposal by the Cabinet.
Taiwan Environmental Protection Union (TEPU) chairman Liu Chun-hsiu (劉俊秀) said that if allowed by the government’s Referendum Review Committee, the next referendum would ask the question: “Do you support Taiwan Power Company’s [Taipower] plan to extend the service life of the first nuclear power plant?”
The Jinshan Nuclear Power Plant in Shimen District (石門) is set to have its two reactors decommissioned in 2018 and 2019.
In July, the group proposed a referendum on the nation’s newest plant, still under construction, which asked: “Do you support the installation of fuel rods in the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City?”
That initiative, however, was rejected by the Referendum Review Committee in August on the grounds that the rationale contradicted the stated purpose of the referendum.
The TEPU filed an administrative lawsuit against the committee on Sept. 14 in an attempt to overturn the decision.
A member of the anti-nuclear power group who initiated the first referendum, Kao Cheng-yen (高成炎) yesterday said the fact that a referendum plan endorsed by 120,000 people can be rejected by a 13-member committee highlights the absurdity of the referendum system.
Kao likened the situation to that of Hong Kong, where the rules of the special administrative region’s election for its chief executive are set by Beijing.
In April, President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration decided to halt construction of the nearly completed Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in Gongliao District (貢寮) with immediate effect amid mounting public sentiment against nuclear power.
The government also decided that the plant being put into operation in the future would be determined by a national referendum.
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
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
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