New Power Party (NPP) Legislator Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) yesterday, on his debut in the legislature, challenged the Minister of Economic Affairs over nuclear waste storage and disposal, and elicited a heated response from the Minister of Labor on the issue of unpaid leave.
Academic and activist-turned-lawmaker Huang had the media’s attention when he asked his first question in the Legislative Yuan.
Huang visited both the Jinshan Nuclear Power Plant and Guosheng Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City on Thursday and said during yesterday’s session that the Cabinet has no mention of its policy for handling nuclear waste in its policy address, adding that the spent fuel pools at both plants are almost full.
Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times
Huang also asked if the government has plans for the nuclear waste after the power plants are decommissioned.
“The Atomic Energy Council said the spent fuel rods could be stored where the plants are located for another 40 years in dry casket facilities, but could the government promise that a place for the final disposal of the nuclear waste will be found in 2055?” Huang asked.
Huang did not wait for Minister of Economic Affairs John Deng (鄧振中) to finish his statement, saying that every nation “in principle has steps to follow in finding a place for the final disposal” of nuclear waste and asked about the government’s promise to the people living on Orchid Island (蘭嶼, also known as Lanyu) that the low-level nuclear waste now stored there would be removed by this year.
“It would be difficult” to fulfill that promise, Deng said.
Huang asked: “If the government cannot even make good on the promise about low-level nuclear waste, how could the public believe the claim that by 2055 a place for the final disposal of nuclear waste would be found?”
Huang added that the Nuclear Materials and Radioactive Waste Management Act (放射性物料管理法) only regulates the final disposal of the nuclear waste, but has no procedural and standard requirements for the middle-term storage of the waste.
“Who decides and through what open procedure that the spent fuel rods are to be dry-stored where the plants are?” he asked.
“The government should have started [finding and negotiating a storage] long before the expiration date, but it chose to delay the process and then said: ‘We have no other choice’ when the time was almost up,” Huang said.
He also questioned Minister of Labor Chen Hsiung-wen (陳雄文) on the issue of unpaid leave.
“What government measures have been carried out on the problem beside requiring companies to report their implementation of unpaid leave?” he asked.
“The ministry has NT$20 billion [US$5.96 billion] marked for on-the-job training and if a person is on unpaid leave for more than three months we provide further assistance,” Chen said.
Huang claimed the “employment stability measures for the insured” stipulated in the Employment Insurance Act (就業保險法) have not been implemented since the amendment of the act in 2009.
“The ‘stability measures’ are only a general term. We have a lot of supporting measures going on right now,” Chen said, asking Huang if he “only reads the law literally.”
Huang asked Chen to review his documents more carefully, saying he is surprised that the minister of labor has no knowledge of the matter.
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