The mothballed Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s Gongliao District (貢寮) is “outdated technology,” Deputy Minister of Economic Affairs Tseng Wen-sheng (曾文生) said yesterday.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Huang Shih-hsiu (黃士修), who initiated the referendum drive, said Tseng was wrong to describe the nuclear power plant as “outdated technology.”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.
To many, Tatu City on the outskirts of Nairobi looks like a success. The first city entirely built by a private company to be operational in east Africa, with about 25,000 people living and working there, it accounts for about two-thirds of all foreign investment in Kenya. Its low-tax status has attracted more than 100 businesses including Heineken, coffee brand Dormans, and the biggest call-center and cold-chain transport firms in the region. However, to some local politicians, Tatu City has looked more like a target for extortion. A parade of governors have demanded land worth millions of dollars in exchange
Hong Kong authorities ramped up sales of the local dollar as the greenback’s slide threatened the foreign-exchange peg. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) sold a record HK$60.5 billion (US$7.8 billion) of the city’s currency, according to an alert sent on its Bloomberg page yesterday in Asia, after it tested the upper end of its trading band. That added to the HK$56.1 billion of sales versus the greenback since Friday. The rapid intervention signals efforts from the city’s authorities to limit the local currency’s moves within its HK$7.75 to HK$7.85 per US dollar trading band. Heavy sales of the local dollar by
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) revenue jumped 48 percent last month, underscoring how electronics firms scrambled to acquire essential components before global tariffs took effect. The main chipmaker for Apple Inc and Nvidia Corp reported monthly sales of NT$349.6 billion (US$11.6 billion). That compares with the average analysts’ estimate for a 38 percent rise in second-quarter revenue. US President Donald Trump’s trade war is prompting economists to retool GDP forecasts worldwide, casting doubt over the outlook for everything from iPhone demand to computing and datacenter construction. However, TSMC — a barometer for global tech spending given its central role in the
An Indonesian animated movie is smashing regional box office records and could be set for wider success as it prepares to open beyond the Southeast Asian archipelago’s silver screens. Jumbo — a film based on the adventures of main character, Don, a large orphaned Indonesian boy facing bullying at school — last month became the highest-grossing Southeast Asian animated film, raking in more than US$8 million. Released at the end of March to coincide with the Eid holidays after the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan, the movie has hit 8 million ticket sales, the third-highest in Indonesian cinema history, Film