Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) presidential nominee, on Wednesday tossed a nuclear energy bombshell into the presidential race when he said that, if elected, he would see the mothballed Fourth Nuclear Power Plant made operational.
On Thursday, he reiterated that goal, while his campaign advisory team said that a Han administration would aim to have at least half of the nation’s energy generated from renewable sources by 2035 — which would be seven years after his presidency ends, assuming he wins two terms.
Han reiterated complaints that the KMT has been making for months: that the administration of President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) is ignoring the will of the millions who voted in favor of last year’s Referendum No. 16: “Do you agree that subparagraph 1, Article 95 of the Electricity Act (電業法), which reads: ‘Nuclear-energy-based power-generating facilities shall wholly stop running by 2025,’ should be abolished?”
However, he and his team have two caveats: The unfinished plant would be activated if its safety could be ensured and if the public agrees.
Those are big ifs.
On Thursday, Tsai criticized Han’s proposals, saying that Han should do more homework before commenting on energy policy.
Yet it is not just Han and his advisers who need to do more homework. The public needs to be better educated as well.
A survey by the Risk Society and Policy Research Center Taiwan in December last year highlighted the confusion of many Taiwanese about the role nuclear energy plays in Taiwan’s power supply, a confusion that only exacerbated the obfuscatory wording of the pro-nuclear referendums on the ballot the previous month.
The survey found that 43.6 percent of respondents thought that nuclear power is the main source of electricity; that only 41 percent of respondents were aware of the government’s plan to increase the share of renewable energy to the supply mix from 6 percent to 20 percent by 2025; and 57 percent did not understand the goals of the government’s energy transition plan.
While the nuclear power percentage of electricity supply was once as high as 20 percent, when all six reactors at the three operational nuclear plants were working, it has dropped to about 13 percent — and even as low as 8 percent — according to some sources.
In recent years, some of those reactors were taken offline for safety or maintenance reasons.
Focusing on making the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant operational is something of a red herring, as it ignores the fact that the other three plants are past their use-by dates or nearing them.
The Atomic Energy Council last month issued a permit to Taiwan Power Co to decommission the Jinshan Nuclear Power Plant, the nation’s first, over a 25-year period, as 40-year operation permits for its reactors had expired — its No. 1 reactor (which has not been in use since 2014) in December last year, and the No. 2 reactor (which has not been in operation since June 2017) last month.
The 40-year operating licenses of the other four reactors are to expire in December 2021, March 2023, July 2024 and May 2025.
Promising to start up the fourth plant — which would take several years anyway — would not do much to ensure that nuclear power would remain a component of Taiwan’s energy mix or “provide the stability needed to improve the nation’s economy,” as Han said this week.
Han was right about one thing: The nation does need an energy plan that is sustainable and pragmatic. However, what he and the KMT are offering is not that.
The Executive Yuan recently revised a page of its Web site on ethnic groups in Taiwan, replacing the term “Han” (漢族) with “the rest of the population.” The page, which was updated on March 24, describes the composition of Taiwan’s registered households as indigenous (2.5 percent), foreign origin (1.2 percent) and the rest of the population (96.2 percent). The change was picked up by a social media user and amplified by local media, sparking heated discussion over the weekend. The pan-blue and pro-China camp called it a politically motivated desinicization attempt to obscure the Han Chinese ethnicity of most Taiwanese.
On Wednesday last week, the Rossiyskaya Gazeta published an article by Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) asserting the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) territorial claim over Taiwan effective 1945, predicated upon instruments such as the 1943 Cairo Declaration and the 1945 Potsdam Proclamation. The article further contended that this de jure and de facto status was subsequently reaffirmed by UN General Assembly Resolution 2758 of 1971. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs promptly issued a statement categorically repudiating these assertions. In addition to the reasons put forward by the ministry, I believe that China’s assertions are open to questions in international
The Legislative Yuan passed an amendment on Friday last week to add four national holidays and make Workers’ Day a national holiday for all sectors — a move referred to as “four plus one.” The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), who used their combined legislative majority to push the bill through its third reading, claim the holidays were chosen based on their inherent significance and social relevance. However, in passing the amendment, they have stuck to the traditional mindset of taking a holiday just for the sake of it, failing to make good use of
As strategic tensions escalate across the vast Indo-Pacific region, Taiwan has emerged as more than a potential flashpoint. It is the fulcrum upon which the credibility of the evolving American-led strategy of integrated deterrence now rests. How the US and regional powers like Japan respond to Taiwan’s defense, and how credible the deterrent against Chinese aggression proves to be, will profoundly shape the Indo-Pacific security architecture for years to come. A successful defense of Taiwan through strengthened deterrence in the Indo-Pacific would enhance the credibility of the US-led alliance system and underpin America’s global preeminence, while a failure of integrated deterrence would
RSS