The mothballed Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s Gongliao District (貢寮) is “outdated technology,” Deputy Minister of Economic Affairs Tseng Wen-sheng (曾文生) said yesterday.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Huang Shih-hsiu (黃士修), who initiated the referendum drive, said Tseng was wrong to describe the nuclear power plant as “outdated technology.”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.
Sweeping policy changes under US Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr are having a chilling effect on vaccine makers as anti-vaccine rhetoric has turned into concrete changes in inoculation schedules and recommendations, investors and executives said. The administration of US President Donald Trump has in the past year upended vaccine recommendations, with the country last month ending its longstanding guidance that all children receive inoculations against flu, hepatitis A and other diseases. The unprecedented changes have led to diminished vaccine usage, hurt the investment case for some biotechs, and created a drag that would likely dent revenues and
Macronix International Co (旺宏), the world’s biggest NOR flash memory supplier, yesterday said it would spend NT$22 billion (US$699.1 million) on capacity expansion this year to increase its production of mid-to-low-density memory chips as the world’s major memorychip suppliers are phasing out the market. The company said its planned capital expenditures are about 11 times higher than the NT$1.8 billion it spent on new facilities and equipment last year. A majority of this year’s outlay would be allocated to step up capacity of multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash memory chips, which are used in embedded multimedia cards (eMMC), a managed
CULPRITS: Factors that affected the slip included falling global crude oil prices, wait-and-see consumer attitudes due to US tariffs and a different Lunar New Year holiday schedule Taiwan’s retail sales ended a nine-year growth streak last year, slipping 0.2 percent from a year earlier as uncertainty over US tariff policies affected demand for durable goods, data released on Friday by the Ministry of Economic Affairs showed. Last year’s retail sales totaled NT$4.84 trillion (US$153.27 billion), down about NT$9.5 billion, or 0.2 percent, from 2024. Despite the decline, the figure was still the second-highest annual sales total on record. Ministry statistics department deputy head Chen Yu-fang (陳玉芳) said sales of cars, motorcycles and related products, which accounted for 17.4 percent of total retail rales last year, fell NT$68.1 billion, or
In the wake of strong global demand for AI applications, Taiwan’s export-oriented economy accelerated with the composite index of economic indicators flashing the first “red” light in December for one year, indicating the economy is in booming mode, the National Development Council (NDC) said yesterday. Moreover, the index of leading indicators, which gauges the potential state of the economy over the next six months, also moved higher in December amid growing optimism over the outlook, the NDC said. In December, the index of economic indicators rose one point from a month earlier to 38, at the lower end of the “red” light.
RSS