The nation’s first and second nuclear power plants were built in volcanic areas before Taiwanese understood much about the dangers of nuclear power, while the third was built atop shale on a fault line.
The government built storage facilities for low-level nuclear waste on scenic Orchid Island (Lanyu, 蘭嶼), a location chosen by Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) officials — self-proclaimed “nuclear power experts” — and supported by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government being somewhat economical with the truth.
As the saying goes: “Man proposes, but God disposes.”
A partial core meltdown caused a serious accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in the US on March 28, 1979, followed by a reactor explosion at Chernobyl in the former Soviet Union on April 25 and 26, 1986. With the radiation leak at Japan’s Fukushima Dai-ichi plant in March 2011, the death knell of any pretense of safe nuclear power was sounded.
Then there is the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s Gongliao District (貢寮), finally mothballed in late 2014 due to public concerns, albeit not until the government had already spent NT$284 billion (US$9.66 billion at the current exchange rate) on its construction.
That is not to say that the issue of nuclear power plants in Taiwan has been resolved, as the first three must still be decommissioned and a solution must be found to safely store nearly 20,000 clusters of used nuclear rods.
Taipower is set to decide the final disposal site for high-level nuclear waste by 2028, initiate construction of the facilities in 2045 and begin their operation in 2055.
The Matsu Islands are a proposed location for the facility, which would be administered by Lienchiang County. They top the list, despite KMT Legislator Chen Hsueh-sheng’s (陳雪生) warnings that such a move is sure to be opposed by local residents, as well as the Lienchiang and Penghu county governments.
Some in Kinmen County also question the fairness of building storage facilities there, since the outlying county does not benefit from the electricity produced by nuclear power plants.
It is funny how the KMT’s die-hard supporters in the strongly pro-blue Kinmen and Lienchiang counties continue to support the party, even though it has consistently championed nuclear power. Now these same people are opposing the construction of nuclear waste storage facilities in their backyard.
Self-proclaimed nuclear power experts will have their work cut out for them in the coming years, trying to convince people of the safety of high-level nuclear power waste storage after saying how safe nuclear power is in the first place.
They will do their utmost to sell the idea before Taipower makes its decision on the location of the facilities. They can be expected to call on local residents to put their faith in the experts and not to succumb to groundless fears.
The actions of these dubious “experts” will decide the fate of the entire public. Corruption is indeed terrible, but constructing nuclear power plants is so much worse.
Chang Kuo-tsai is a former deputy secretary-general of the Taiwan Association of University Professors.
Translated by Eddy Chang
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
OpenAI has announced a major upgrade to the technology that underpins ChatGPT, the seemingly magical online tool that professionals have been using to draft e-mails, write blog posts and more. If you think of ChatGPT as a car, the new language model known as GPT-4 adds a more powerful engine. The old ChatGPT could only read text. The new ChatGPT can look at a photograph of the contents of your fridge and suggest a dinner recipe. The old ChatGPT scored in the 10th percentile on the bar exam. The new one was in the 90th. In the hours since its release,
RSS