This year is the 10th anniversary of Japan’s Great Tohoku Earthquake and the ensuing Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant disaster. It is also a crucial year for Taiwan, one that could see the nation bidding farewell to nuclear power and marching in the direction of a “nuclear-free homeland.” A national referendum is to take place on Aug. 28 to decide the future of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s Gongliao District (貢寮).
On March 11, 2011, an earthquake and tsunami in northeastern Japan led to the failure of four reactor cores and gas explosions at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant, causing a large amount of radioactive material to leak. The Japanese government ordered the emergency evacuation of about 140,000 residents living within a 20km radius.
Even now, a decade and huge amounts of money later, Japan is still dealing with the damage caused by the disaster, unable to deal with the polluted land and water in the area, or fix the damaged reactors. As much as 1.23 million tonnes of contaminated radioactive water are stored in containers, but the government cannot find a way of dealing with it that is acceptable to the public or that would not further pollute the environment.
The high level of radioactivity in the environment means that tens of thousands of people are still unable to return to their homes.
The Fukushima nuclear accident was just the most recent nuclear disaster — after the Three Mile Island accident in the US and the Chernobyl disaster in the former Soviet Union — to have occurred in countries with nuclear power. It has permanently lain to rest the myth of the safety of nuclear power, and has led to vocal anti-nuclear protests throughout the world, including in Taiwan.
The Fourth Nuclear Power Plant has been a center of controversy for more than three decades and, following intense public pressure, plant construction was halted in 2014 on the orders of then-premier Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) administration.
When the Democratic Progressive Party came to power in 2016, it implemented the Basic Environmental Act (環境基本法), which set the goal of a nuclear-free homeland, established a timetable for having zero nuclear power generation by 2025 and introduced measures to restructure the nation’s energy supply.
Regrettably, a pro-nuclear camp in Taiwan advocates the continued use of nuclear power and objects to the government’s nuclear-free homeland policy, while also opposing a lifting of the ban on all food imports from five Japanese prefectures affected by the Fukushima Dai-ichi disaster. It is this camp that has pushed for the referendum.
It is unfathomable why the Central Election Commission, which oversees referendums, accepted the proposal for this referendum without holding a public hearing. Despite the original proposal being riddled with falsehoods and inaccuracies, the commission allowed it to progress to the next stage and collect the required number of signatures.
In a matter of months, the government will be obliged to spend large amounts of taxpayers’ hard-earned money to print copies of this ridiculous document and send it to households throughout Taiwan.
Taiwan is a small, densely populated nation, full of fault lines and subject to frequent earthquakes and typhoons. It simply does not have the appropriate natural environment and social conditions for developing nuclear power.
By a dint of good luck or heaven’s blessings, a major nuclear incident has not occurred, but the nation’s three operational plants have produced large volumes of nuclear waste that will be difficult to process properly.
The nation cannot continue to use nuclear power, in disregard of the fate of later generations. If the nation’s pro-nuclear elements are resisted, Taiwan can become nuclear-free by 2025, while increasing the proportion of power generated using low-carbon, sustainable, environmentally friendly energy sources.
It is of paramount importance that voters are mobilized on Aug. 28 to reject restarting construction on the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant — to ensure that the plant is consigned to the history books once and for all, and to advance toward achieving that goal of having a nuclear-free homeland.
Shih Shin-min is the founding chairperson of the Taiwan Environmental Protection Union.
Translated by Paul Cooper
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