The nation’s annual march against nuclear power plants is to be held today, with activists on Thursday calling for more openness and civic participation in crafting a nuclear waste disposal plan.
“We have to keep the pressure on the government, otherwise it will stall — our hope is that there should be a result by the conclusion of the Democratic Progressive Party’s [DPP] four years in power,” Green Citizens’ Action Alliance secretary-general Tsuei Su-hsin (崔愫欣) said while leading more than a dozen people in a protest outside the Legislative Yuan in Taipei.
People plan to congregate on Ketagalan Boulevard this afternoon for the march, a major annual environmental demonstration.
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
“This will be our first march since the DPP took full control [of the government] and there are a lot of issues — from retiring nuclear reactors to transitioning to different forms of energy — where we feel there is a need for society to rigorously inspect whether the government has sufficient political resolve,” Tsuei said.
Tsuei added that nuclear waste disposal and energy taxes were key issues.
“Nuclear waste disposal cannot be something where Taiwan Power Co just makes a decision for itself,” Mom Loves Taiwan secretary-general Yang Shun-mei (楊順美) said, calling for open discussion of how waste is to be addressed, included the geology of proposed disposal sites.
“Statements the government has made about future energy prices have been extremely conservative and vague,” Green Citizens’ Action Alliance deputy secretary-general Hung Shen-han (洪申翰) said, calling for the government to stop avoiding demands for an energy tax.
“The government should definitely be taking action and I trust that now is the time for the DPP to realize the promises it made before the election,” said DPP Legislator Chuang Ruei-hsiung (莊瑞雄), who represented the party’s legislative caucus in talks with the protesters.
He said the party is considering establishing a cross-party legislative committee to draft plans for the disposal of nuclear waste.
Costa Rica sent a group of intelligence officials to Taiwan for a short-term training program, the first time the Central American country has done so since the countries ended official diplomatic relations in 2007, a Costa Rican media outlet reported last week. Five officials from the Costa Rican Directorate of Intelligence and Security last month spent 23 days in Taipei undergoing a series of training sessions focused on national security, La Nacion reported on Friday, quoting unnamed sources. The Costa Rican government has not confirmed the report. The Chinese embassy in Costa Rica protested the news, saying in a statement issued the same
Taiwan’s Liu Ming-i, right, who also goes by the name Ray Liu, poses with a Chinese Taipei flag after winning the gold medal in the men’s physique 170cm competition at the International Fitness and Bodybuilding Federation Asian Championship in Ajman, United Arab Emirates, yesterday.
A year-long renovation of Taipei’s Bangka Park (艋舺公園) began yesterday, as city workers fenced off the site and cleared out belongings left by homeless residents who had been living there. Despite protests from displaced residents, a city official defended the government’s relocation efforts, saying transitional housing has been offered. The renovation of the park in Taipei’s Wanhua District (萬華), near Longshan Temple (龍山寺), began at 9am yesterday, as about 20 homeless people packed their belongings and left after being asked to move by city personnel. Among them was a 90-year-old woman surnamed Wang (王), who last week said that she had no plans
TO BE APPEALED: The environment ministry said coal reduction goals had to be reached within two months, which was against the principle of legitimate expectation The Taipei High Administrative Court on Thursday ruled in favor of the Taichung Environmental Protection Bureau in its administrative litigation against the Ministry of Environment for the rescission of a NT$18 million fine (US$609,570) imposed by the bureau on the Taichung Power Plant in 2019 for alleged excess coal power generation. The bureau in November 2019 revised what it said was a “slip of the pen” in the text of the operating permit granted to the plant — which is run by Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) — in October 2017. The permit originally read: “reduce coal use by 40 percent from Jan.
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