With the artificial intelligence boom, Taiwan’s demand for electricity is expected to rise in the next few years, which has led to the idea that the decommissioning of the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant in Pingtung County should be delayed.
The Jinshan Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s Shihmen District (石門) has already been out of service for several years, and with the recent opening of a new dry storage facility, the spent fuel rods stored there can be moved out gradually, enabling the next phase of decommissioning work to begin.
As decommissioning or extending the lifespan of a nuclear power plant requires some time to implement, there is an opportunity to use the decommissioning of the Jinshan plant as an example to evaluate whether the lifespan of the Ma-anshan plant is worth extending.
When decommissioning a nuclear power plant, in addition to moving the nuclear waste to dry storage, the process requires a lot of decontamination and classification work.
After running for about 40 years, a nuclear power plant would have experienced operational problems, which causes nuclear contamination of the plant’s equipment, part of which can only be discovered during its dismantlement.
Therefore, depending on the degree of contamination, some of the waste must be properly processed before capacity reduction, while more seriously contaminated waste that cannot be processed safely must be properly sealed and a safe storage environment sought. This can easily delay decommissioning and result in more funds than was budgeted to be spent.
At present, the Jinshan plant’s turbines and other important facilities have already been dismantled. There has been no international precedent in which a nuclear power plant has been dismantled and then resumed operations again. Theoretically, the possibility of restarting the Jinshan plant is very low.
Nuclear Safety Commission Chairman Chen Tung-yang (陳東陽) has recently said that there is no standard procedure for decommissioning a nuclear power plant. Therefore, there would be a considerable overlap between decommissioning work at the Jinshan plant and any extension evaluation of the Ma-anshan plant.
The public resistance, budget overruns and difficulties in disposing of radioactive waste encountered during the decommissioning of the Jinshan plant could serve as important references to determine whether or not it is cost-effective to delay the decommissioning of the Ma-anshan plant.
If these problems turn out to be more difficult to handle than expected, it would be worth seriously considering whether the government should delay the decommissioning of the Ma-anshan plant.
Given global warming, nuclear power’s low-carbon emissions have once again attracted attention.
However, when decommissioning nuclear power plants, the public must face the difficulties and costs of nuclear waste storage, as well as the plants’ demolition. Under such circumstances, it is worth considering whether nuclear power is the only way to solve the carbon emissions problem.
With geological concerns in Taiwan regarding the construction of nuclear power plants and potential storage sites, the risks of extending the operation of nuclear power plants and the disposal of nuclear waste would be a considerable test for the government.
Chen Kuan-lin is a research manager from Taipei.
Translated by Eddy Chang
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