Taiwan Power Co’s (Taipower) proposal to build a coal-fired power plant in Changhua County yesterday was rejected for the second time in the project’s 12-year history, while the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) suspended discussion of the company’s decommissioning plan for the Jinshan Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City as it was deemed to be “ill-defined.”
Taipower’s plan to build a two-generator plant in the Changhua Coastal Industrial Park was first submitted for review in 2004. Between 2004 and 2007, the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) committee concluded that the project should be rejected.
However, before the EPA could formally adopt the committee’s decision, Taipower withdrew its submission to prevent a wholesale rejection.
The company resubmitted the project in 2008, almost unchanged from its original submission, and in January, the EIA committee rejected the project, as the project does not conform to environment and national energy development plans.
At yesterday’s grand assembly, dozens of protesters criticized the Changhua project, saying the county is surrounded by the Taichung Power Plant and Formosa Plastics Group’s naphtha cracker factory in Yunlin, adding that the proposed plant would only worsen pollution.
After an hour of closed-door deliberations, the assembly rejected the proposal and asked the Ministry of Economic Affairs to reject the company’s development application.
The assembly was also set to review Taipower’s request to have plans to decommission the Jinshan plant go directly to second-phase EIA reviews, but the assembly suspended the review as the plan was unclear.
The 25-year decommissioning plan includes eight years of facility decontamination, 12 years of plant demolition, three years of monitoring and two years of site restoration.
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