An article published by the Liberty Times on Thursday reported that Wang Hung-wei (王鴻薇), the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) candidate in the legislative by-election in Taipei’s third electoral district, has proposed that the Guosheng Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s Wanli District (萬里) and the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant in Pingtung County not be decommissioned.
Environmental organizations criticized Wang’s proposal as being “legally baseless and practically infeasible,” to which she has yet to respond.
Instead, she asked her rival in the by-election, the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) Enoch Wu (吳怡農), to answer the question, and invited him to a public policy debate.
Wu said that Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) had already deemed Wang’s proposal unrealistic and it is “highly irresponsible” to discuss national energy plans by striking a bargain.
Wu added that the Taiwan Environmental Protection Union had also released a statement opposing Wang’s proposal.
While Wang advocates keeping the nation’s nuclear power plants operational, the union believes that the goal should be to achieve a nuclear-free homeland.
Without responding to the union, Wang wished to hear Wu’s opinions on public policy.
Spent nuclear fuel rods at the Guosheng and the Ma-anshan plants are high-level radioactive waste that cannot be processed or safely disposed of in Taiwan.
The spent fuel rods are kept in the power plants’ spent fuel pools.
The dry-cask storage method was once employed in an attempt to dispose of the radioactive waste, but a long-term solution to the issue has never been developed.
If the Guosheng and the Ma-anshan plants continue to operate, how can the nation take care of high-level radioactive waste?
Where would the used fuel rods be stored?
This is an extremely serious problem, and all parties involved should think about it seriously.
Politicians should not appropriate the issue to win votes. If radioactive waste is not handled carefully, future generations would pay the price.
Former US president Abraham Lincoln once said: “You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all the time.”
People in Taiwan should take heed of and reflect upon Lincoln’s words, especially Taiwanese politicians.
Whether the Guosheng and the Ma-anshan plants should be decommissioned is a highly technical issue requiring scientific expertise.
It is not necessarily a problem concerning laws and politics, nor is it public policy open to debate. The candidates for a legislative by-election need not concern themselves with it.
A candidate’s irresponsible proposal is likely a trick to win votes, which is nothing more than fraud.
Candidates should not toy with the issue of nuclear power plants and radioactive waste, while voters should be sensible, smart and alert.
Chen Yi-nan is an arbitrator.
Translated by Yi-hung Liu
KMT Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun’s (鄭麗文) recent visit to Beijing and her upcoming visit to Washington will serve as a high-level test of her diplomatic mettle. In Beijing, Cheng was received with symbolic gestures, a warm reception, and high-level access. In Washington, she will receive far less pomp and far sharper questions about the KMT’s vision for the future of Taiwan. Her challenge will be to persuade Washington that the KMT’s engagement with China can coexist with strong deterrence. Cheng’s April 7-12 visit to mainland China coincided with an intense period of conflict in Iran. Despite the strategic significance of Cheng’s trip,
The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has sent the vast Asian chemicals industry into a tailspin. Deprived of the likes of Qatari natural gas and Saudi Arabian oil, the region’s fertilizer and plastics plants are slowing production or even shutting down. Everywhere except China, that is. In petrochemicals, China is unique. As well as a traditional industry that uses oil and gas as feedstock, it has parallel output that relies on its abundant domestic coal. Unsurprisingly, India and other regional powers want to copy and paste the Chinese method. This would not be easy — or climate friendly. The
US President Donald Trump recently repeated his claim that “Taiwan stole America’s chip industry,” reigniting public debate on the issue. As a former Taiwanese minister of economic affairs and an entrepreneur deeply involved in semiconductor supply chain development, I feel a responsibility to clarify this misunderstanding. From the perspective of global industrial evolution and the economic principle of comparative advantage, such a statement appears overly simplistic and risks obscuring the essence of the issue. The rise of Taiwan’s semiconductor industry was not built on “replacing America,” but rather emerged as a result of countries pursuing different development paths within the
Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto says he knows how to fix the problems facing Indonesia. Yet his economic mismanagement and authoritarian tendencies are steering the nation toward a familiar mix of currency instability and political chaos. The world’s fourth-most populous nation risks reversing the hard-won democratic and business reforms that came after the Asian Financial Crisis in 1997. At that time, the rupiah collapsed and the political upheaval that followed forced former president Haji Mohamed Suharto from power. Prabowo’s administration is ignoring similar warning signs. That disconnect was apparent in a national address on Wednesday, when Prabowo projected the swagger that has
RSS