Pegatron Group chairman Tung Tzu-hsien (童子賢) said Taiwan’s energy mix should have a “golden ratio” of 30 percent renewable energy, 30 percent nuclear energy and 40 percent fossil fuel energy.
Tung is also deputy convener of President William Lai’s (賴清德) newly established National Climate Change Response Committee. His proposal, along with efforts by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party to extend the service life of Taiwan’s nuclear power plants, is in opposition to the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) policy of a nuclear-free homeland.
The question is: How does Tung imagine that Taiwan could achieve 30 percent nuclear power generation? The numbers speak for themselves. In 1985, Taiwan’s nuclear power generation peaked at 51.71 percent of its power mix. The nation’s existing three nuclear power plants — the mothballed Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s Gongliao District (貢寮) has not been finished — have two reactors each, with a total installed capacity of 5.144 gigawatt (GW).
However, following an increase in public opposition to nuclear energy, no new nuclear power reactors have come into commercial operation. Over the years, increasing demand for electricity has led to the addition of private power plants, increasing the capacity of non-nuclear power generation from 8.63GW in 1982 to 62.143GW at the end of last year. Taiwan’s energy diversification resulted in nuclear power generation dropping from 27.31 percent of the energy mix in 1982 to 2.97 percent last year.
It is possible to calculate the numbers needed to fill the gap to bring nuclear power generation up to 30 percent of the total power generation, based on the 62.143GW of non-nuclear power generation at the end of last year and factoring in the 5.144GW total installed capacity of Taiwan’s three existing nuclear power plants.
The math leads us to an additional generation of 21.488GW per nuclear power plant, including the fourth plant, assuming it can be brought online.
The total installed capacity of the two reactors in the mothballed fourth nuclear power plant is 2.7GW. To reach the 21.488GW capacity required by Tung’s 30 percent plan would need at least eight such nuclear plants. Again, the two reactors at the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant in Pingtung County’s Ma-anshan (馬鞍山) total 1.9GW, requiring 11 plants of similar capacity to reach the 21.488GW goal.
In a June 20 report on energy allocation and development, Tung proposed placing four new reactors at each of Taiwan’s four nuclear power plants. He said that the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant, which covers 3.3km2 and only houses two 951MW reactors, could accommodate four more “OL-like” 1.6GW reactors.
However, even if each nuclear power plant houses four of these 1.6GW reactors, that only totals 30 percent of the 21.488GW needed.
How would local governments and people react?
OL3 uses a European Pressurized Reactor (EPR) at the Olkiluoto Nuclear Power Plant in Eurajoki, Finland. Tung said Taiwan should use similar reactors.
However, the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis in February published a report titled European Pressurized Reactors: Next-generation design suffers from old problems, which said that the five EPRs constructed by French electricity company Electricite de France come with a host of problems.
Shieh Jyh-cherng is a retired National Taiwan University professor.
Translated by Nicole Wong
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