Changes to the Referendum Act (公民投票法) mean that from Aug. 28 a national referendum can be held once every two years. Referendum proposals that have passed the second signature threshold include restarting construction of the mothballed Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s Gongliao District (貢寮); banning the importation of pork containing ractopamine; binding referendums to presidential and legislative elections; and providing enhanced protections to algal reefs off the coast of Taoyuan.
Central Election Commission (CEC) Chairman Lee Chin-yung (李進勇) has said that every additional referendum adds approximately NT$180 million (US$6.37 million) to the budget — a not insignificant sum.
There are two reasons the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant referendum should not be held:
First, the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant is near the capital: This is extremely rare and raises serious questions about safety.
On March 11, 2011, an earthquake off the east coast of Japan triggered a massive tsunami that overwhelmed the sea defenses of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant. Radiation leaks from the plant’s reactors forced the evacuation of 154,000 people from the immediate and surrounding areas.
Following the disaster, Tokyo-based Taiwanese writer Liu Li-erh (劉黎兒) wrote an article that was published in the Taiwanese media, relating concerns about the safety of Taiwan’s civil nuclear power industry by Japanese writer Takashi Hirose and a number of Japanese specialists.
The safety concerns were related to Taiwan’s Jinshan and Guosheng nuclear power plants in New Taipei City being within a 30km radius of urban population centers that are home to 6 million residents.
In contrast, there were only 170,000 people living within a 30km radius of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant.
Second, the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant has taken longer to build than any other nuclear power station in the world, spanning three decades of stop-start construction.
The budget for the plant was originally set at NT$169.7 billion, but this later jumped to NT$283.9 billion.
The project has also suffered the most delays of any infrastructure project in Taiwan’s history and is also the most costly nuclear power plant project in the world.
The main reason for this was the ill-conceived splitting up of the project and division among sub-contractors, which resulted in an unmanageable 1,000 tender processes.
Design changes, construction errors, corruption and embezzlement, the repeated halting and restarting of construction, and delays have drained the public’s confidence in the plant. The Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant disaster further compounded the public’s fears over safety.
The initiators of the referendum for starting the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant claim that nuclear power is needed to provide the nation with an abundant source of “clean energy.”
However, the wording of the proposed referendum fails to mention two major risks inherent in starting the plant. Despite this glaring omission, the CEC has approved the referendum.
Furthermore, by ignoring the safety of residents in Taipei and New Taipei City, the mainly Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) politicians who are vigorously supporting the referendum not only show that they have clearly not done their homework, they also appear to be perfectly willing to use it as a cynical ploy to attract votes.
Jang Show-ling is chairperson of the Public Economics Research Center at National Taiwan University.
Translated by Edward Jones
The White House’s decision to take a 9.9 percent stake in Intel Corp is looking like very shrewd business indeed. Since the government bought in at US$20.47 a share last August, the US chipmaker’s surging stock price has delivered the US a US$43 billion return. One of the reasons the investment has so far proved so sound is that the White House has made sure of it. According to The Wall Street Journal, Howard personally pushed deals on Intel’s behalf with some of the most lucrative clients imaginable. They include Nvidia Corp, the company at the heart of the AI
In a Taiwanese university classroom, a lecturer asks in English: “Can anyone give me an example from Taiwan?” Students look down. No one answers. After class, one student writes on the course platform in Mandarin: “I understood the concept, but I didn’t know how to answer in English.” That moment highlights a key issue in Taiwan’s English-medium instruction (EMI) reform: It is not just about more English-taught courses, but whether students can learn, participate and belong. EMI expansion is part of the Bilingual 2030 policy and the Ministry of Education’s BEST Program, aiming to improve English ability, support EMI teaching
A single photograph can cut through a lot of noise, but it can also be used to misrepresent the truth. At the very least, it can concentrate the mind on something that requires further investigation. On Monday last week, Ma Ying-jeou Foundation CEO Tai Hsia-ling (戴遐齡) and former National Security Council secretary-general King Pu-tsung (金溥聰) held a news conference in which they showed a photograph of former foundation CEO Hsiao Hsu-tsen (蕭旭岑), now Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) deputy chairman. In the image Hsiao is seated next to Xiamen Taiwan Businessmen Association chairman Han Ying-huan (韓螢煥). The two men were holding
The Ministry of the Interior, working with the navy and coast guard, is organizing Taiwan’s first joint exercise simulating escort tankers carrying liquefied natural gas (LNG) and oil through a Chinese blockade. The drills simulate fuel transport along three maritime corridors leading toward Japan, the Philippines and the US. Deputy Minister of the Interior Sawyer Mars (馬士元) said that a blockade of the Taiwan Strait would amount to “almost a 100 percent blockade of the regional energy supply.” Minister of National Defense Wellington Koo said planning to counter a blockade is standard practice in Taipei. While the exercise is limited in
RSS