Anti-nuclear activists on Wednesday released an assessment of three presidential candidates’ policies on nuclear power and energy development, saying the issue of nuclear waste is deliberately avoided, despite all candidates vowing to build a nuclear-free Taiwan.
Members of the National Nuclear Abolition Action Platform said they requested the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and People First Party (PFP) to clarify their stance on multiple issues, including the decommissioning of the nation’s three operating nuclear plants, abolishing a mothballed plant, relocation of low-level radioactive waste from Orchid Island (Lanyu, 蘭嶼), treatment of used fuel rods and energy transition policy.
Platform members announced an analysis of the three parties’ policies.
“Although phasing out nuclear power and speeding up energy transition is at the center of all three parties’ policies, which is admittedly an advance from their stances years ago, they have not touched upon the sensitive issue of nuclear waste management. That is why we called a media conference to urge them to face the issue,” Green Citizens’ Action Alliance secretary-general Tsuei Su-hsin (崔愫欣) said
The three parties pledged to deactivate the three functioning nuclear plants by 2025, but the KMT and the PFP did not exclude the possibility of extending the service life of those plants if the nation faced power shortages.
Both the KMT and the PFP said the activation of the sealed nuclear plant should be decided by a referendum, while the DPP said it would not resume the construction of the unfinished plant.
Both the KMT and DPP said low-level nuclear waste currently stored on Orchid Island would be relocated until the site of a permanent or intermediate nuclear waste depository is decided, while no party has a management policy on high-level nuclear waste.
Orchid Island-based Tao Foundation director Siyaman Foangayan said there is never a practical relocation program and major parties have been circumventing the issue, adding that: “It is extremely unfair to Orchid Island residents who do not enjoy the benefit of power generation, but have to take in the worst garbage 23 million people in Taiwan produce.”
Meanwhile, the PFP said it supports an energy tax law, the KMT said such a law would overlap with the existing Greenhouse Gas Reduction Act (溫室氣體減量法) to double the burden on taxpayers, whereas the DPP said it would build a green tax system to internalize external costs.
Alliance deputy secretary-general Hung Shen-han (洪申翰) said the KMT completely misunderstood the nature of the energy tax, while asking the DPP and PFP to elaborate how their goals could be achieved.
“Years of anti-nuclear campaigns have seen major parties turn to abolishing nuclear power, but core issues like nuclear waste relocation and management remains unsettled. Voters must carefully review the candidates and vote for a nuclear-free homeland,” Hung said.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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:
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
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