The mothballed Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s Gongliao District (貢寮) is “outdated technology,” Deputy Minister of Economic Affairs Tseng Wen-sheng (曾文生) said yesterday.
“We cannot solve the problems we will face 10 years from now with technology that is already two decades old,” Tseng told a clean energy forum organized by the Industrial Technology Research Institute (工研院).
With nuclear energy off the table as an option, Tseng proposed other solutions to reduce carbon emissions.
Photo: CNA
“We hope that more commercial enterprises will join Taiwan Power Co (台電) in developing the green energy market,” Tseng said. “We will liberalize the market more so that the private sector can help reduce our carbon footprint.”
He also named reducing carbon emissions during the manufacturing process, promoting electric vehicles and carbon capture technologies as ways for Taiwan to reduce its carbon output.
The nation is on Aug. 28 to hold a referendum on whether to activate the nuclear power plant.
President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) last month said that activating the plant would be both expensive and dangerous, and “absolutely not an option.”
Tsai’s energy transition plan looks to raise the proportion of liquified natural gas in the nation’s energy mix to 50 percent, while renewable energy would make up 20 percent, and nuclear power would have nearly zero contribution by 2025.
Nuclear power advocate Huang Shih-hsiu (黃士修), who initiated the referendum drive, said Tseng was wrong to describe the nuclear power plant as “outdated technology.”
“There are more than 90 nuclear reactors whose tenure has been expanded to 60 years in the US, some are planned to continue generating power for 80 or even 100 years,” Huang said. “Compared with those plants, the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant is very advanced.”
Huang voiced confidence that his referendum would pass on Aug. 28, saying nuclear power is a comparatively cheap source of energy that would also help Taiwan reduce carbon emissions.
He described an activation of the nuclear power plant as “the first key” to solving Taiwan’s looming power shortage, saying that it can start generating electricity in five years and provide about 10 percent of the nation’s energy mix.
Cairo’s new monorail slices across the city skyline, running above the familiar chaos of blaring horns and aging buses’ exhaust fumes that mark rush hour below. The US$4.5 billion monorail, opened this month, is among Egypt’s most prominent new transport projects, part of a debt-funded infrastructure drive criticized for sapping state finances while bringing limited benefits to most of the country’s 109 million people. “It feels like you’re in a different country,” said Ramy Sayed, a restaurant manager, aboard a driverless Innovia 300 train. “No noise, no traffic, we’re not used to this.” The eastern line runs 56km from the bustling middle-class
Starlux Airlines Co (星宇航空) today unveiled a long-haul network expansion plan at a shareholders’ meeting in Taipei, including direct flights to Barcelona, Spain, and Zurich, Switzerland, as well as a service connecting Taipei, Sydney and New Zealand. Starlux is to become the first Taiwanese carrier to offer non-stop services to the two European cities, while the inaugural oceanic route is expected to expand transit opportunities within the Australia-New Zealand market, Starlux said. Flight services to Chicago, Dallas, Washington and New York are under evaluation, the airline added. Prior to the shareholders’ meeting, the airline earlier this year announced that it would be
Taiwanese firms have increased investment in the Philippines in recent years as Manila’s ties with Washington deepen and global supply chains continue to shift away from China, an expert at the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The Philippines had not been among Taiwanese investors’ top choices in Southeast Asia, CIER Taiwan ASEAN Studies Center director Kristy Hsu (徐遵慈) said at a seminar in Taipei. However, Taiwan’s investment in the country has grown significantly since the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching US $257 million last year, a high in recent years, she said. Although Taiwan’s total investment in the Philippines still lags
Taiwanese prosecutors suspect that three people successfully smuggled at least one shipment of Nvidia Corp artificial intelligence (AI) chips to China after first exporting them to Japan, people familiar with the matter said. The trio was detained last week by the Keelung District Prosecutors’ Office for allegedly falsifying documents related to exports of Super Micro Computer Inc servers containing advanced Nvidia chips, which the US has barred from sale to China without a license from Washington. The move marked Taiwan’s first public crackdown on AI chip diversion after years of pressure from the US to take a more active role in curtailing
RSS