On the evening of Monday, March 25, Premier Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺), who stands with President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) in supporting nuclear power, met with Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌), New Taipei City (新北市) Mayor Eric Chu (朱立倫) and Keelung Mayor Chang Tong-rong (張通榮) to discuss the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in Gongliao District (貢寮), New Taipei City, and related issues.
According to media reports, Jiang said at the meeting that “it is true that the government does not have a complete plan on how to handle nuclear waste.”
One reason nuclear power plants are so frightening is precisely that “it is true that the government does not have a complete plan on how to handle nuclear waste.”
Although he tried to moderate his statement, Jiang’s inadvertent admission that the government has no plans for the safe handling of nuclear waste will undoubtedly have an impact on the eventual fate of nuclear power plants in Taiwan.
If Jiang had any academic conscience and political morals, what he should have said was: “It is true that, so far, our government does not have a complete plan on how to handle nuclear waste. Not only that, the US, Japanese, Russian or French governments, despite their advanced use of nuclear energy, also don’t have a complete plan on how to deal with nuclear waste.”
There are three levels to this statement. On the first level, by virtue of having nuclear power plants, there will be nuclear waste. This waste is not the kind of poison that will be around for a mere 100 years: It is something we will have to live with for centuries.
Without a complete plan for the handling of nuclear waste, why is there so much talk about “nuclear safety? Does it not mean Ma’s statement that “without nuclear safety, there will be no Fourth Nuclear Power Plant” is just hot air?
On the second level, be it at nuclear waste storage sites on Lanyu (蘭嶼), also known as Orchid Island, or at any of the nation’s other three nuclear power plants, the existing temporary storage sites for nuclear waste are becoming overfull.
Since Ma and his clique have no way of handling the nuclear waste at these sites, how can they go on talking about building a fourth plant and producing more nuclear waste?
Finally, on the third level, at a time when there is no complete plan for dealing with nuclear waste, one wonders what astronomical sums will have to be spent before a solution is found, if ever.
Since it cannot be estimated how deep the money pit of nuclear waste treatment will be, how can Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) go on claiming that “nuclear power is the cheapest” of all energy sources? Does Taipower not include the cost of a final solution for the treatment of nuclear waste in the cost of nuclear energy production?
In short, Jiang’s statement that “it is true that the government does not have a complete plan on how to handle nuclear waste materials” is sufficient to poke a big hole in the balloon of lies about how cheap nuclear energy is.
Chang Kuo-tsai is a former deputy secretary-general of the Taiwan Association of University Professors.
Translated by Perry Svensson
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) founder Morris Chang (張忠謀) has repeatedly voiced concern over the weakening cost competitiveness of its US fabs and challenged the US’ “on-shore” policy of building domestic semiconductor capacity. Yet not once has the government said anything, even though the economy is highly dependent on the chip industry. In the US, the cost of operating a semiconductor factory is at least twice the amount required to operate one in Taiwan, rather than the 50 percent he had previously calculated, Chang said on Thursday last week at a forum arranged by CommonWealth Magazine. He said that he had
The Twenty-Four Histories (中國廿四史) is a collection of official Chinese dynastic histories from Records of the Grand Historian (史記) to the History of the Ming Dynasty (明史) that cover the time from the legendary Yellow Emperor (黃帝) to the Chongzhen Emperor (崇禎), the last Ming emperor. History is written by the victors. These histories are not merely records of the rise and fall of emperors, they also demonstrate the ways in which conquerors embellished their own achievements while deriding those of the conquered. The history written by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is no exception. The PRC presents its
In August 2013, Reuters reported that Beijing had been gaining soft power with investment commitments and trade with countries in Latin America. However, instead of jumping on the chance to make new allies, China stalled requests to establish diplomatic relations with the countries to avoid galling Taiwanese voters. Beijing was also courting then-president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), and the tactic left China with a trump card if cross-strait relations turned cool. China had rebuffed at least five countries’ requests to switch diplomatic recognition to Beijing, the report said, quoting a China analyst. Honduras could become the ninth diplomatic ally, and also the fifth
The International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant issued on Friday last week for Russian President Vladimir Putin delighted Uighurs, as Putin’s today signals Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) tomorrow. The crimes committed by Xi are many times more serious than what Putin has been accused of. Putin has caused more than 8 million people to flee Ukraine. By imprisoning more than 3 million Uighurs in concentration camps and restricting the movement of more than 10 million Uighurs, Xi has not only denied them the opportunity to live humanely, but also the opportunity to escape oppression. The 8 million Ukrainians who fled
RSS