The No. 2 reactor at the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant in Pingtung County was shut down on the evening of Saturday last week. It took less than two days before baseless and malicious rumors began to spread, misleading the public into mistakenly equating the decommissioning of nuclear power with air pollution and even claiming that Taiwan Power Co’s (Taipower) electricity would become “dirty.”
Allow me to compare the proportion of nuclear-generated electricity since 2016 with air pollution and carbon emission coefficients resulting from power generation. Let the numbers speak for themselves.
The gradual decommissioning of Taiwan’s nuclear reactors caused the share of nuclear energy in Taipower’s total electricity generation and purchases to drop from 13.49 percent in 2016 to 6.99 percent in 2023, further dropping to 4.66 percent last year. Air pollutant emissions from Taipower’s plants simultaneously decreased from 107,000 tonnes in 2016 to 37,000 tonnes in 2023 — a 65 percent reduction. The carbon emission coefficient for electricity also dropped from 0.53kg of carbon dioxide per kilowatt-hour (kWh) in 2016 to 0.494kg carbon dioxide per kWh in 2023.
From the data, it is evident that neither air pollution nor carbon emissions from power generation increased during this period, despite the decreased proportion of nuclear energy.
Relying on nuclear energy is not the answer to reducing the amount of air pollution caused by power generation — the solution to this issue lies in advancing air pollution control technology.
The reality is that air quality is affected by several factors, such as pollution sources, terrain and atmospheric conditions. Hastily attributing air pollution to thermal power generation alone is a myth that does nothing to solve the problem at hand, and distorting thermal power as being “dirty electricity” while overlooking the difficult issue of nuclear waste management is not helpful to Taiwan’s sustainable development.
Shieh Jyh-cherng is a retired National Taiwan University professor.
Translated by Kyra Gustavsen
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