The debate over Taiwan’s energy mix involves disparate, yet interrelated considerations such as public health, national security, supply chain resilience, industrial robustness, energy supply stability and expandability, and finding a balance via democracy that will satisfy local families, overseas investors and Taiwan’s economic future.
On Wednesday, the Taipei Times editorial, “Taiwan needs energy to feed AI future,” mentioned investment plans by Nvidia Corp to assist Taiwan to become an artificial intelligence (AI) hub for the company. Nvidia chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) has said that “Taiwan should absolutely invest in nuclear power.”
In an article published today, Taipei-based Greenpeace East Asia climate and energy campaigner Lena Chang (張皪心) writes that Taiwan should continue to pursue development of renewable energy sources and criticizes the government, saying it has protectionist policies that impede foreign investment into the renewable energy sector. She also writes that, instead of Huang advocating more investment in nuclear power, Nvidia should take a leaf out of Apple’s book and require that all of its suppliers achieve 100 percent renewable energy by 2030.
However, the government is sticking to its policy of a “non-nuclear homeland.” Last month, the final operational nuclear reactor in Taiwan, the No. 2 reactor at the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant in Pingtung County’s Hengchun Township (恆春), was decommissioned, having reached its operational life of 40 years.
On Aug. 23, Taiwan is to hold a referendum on whether the plant should be allowed to resume operations, following a proposal for the referendum by the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), supported by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).
The legal basis for the resumption was laid down in an amendment to Article 6 of the Nuclear Reactor Facilities Regulation Act (核子反應器設施管制法) on May 13, days before the reactor was decommissioned, allowing for its lifetime to be extended to 60 years.
President William Lai (賴清德) in August last year said during the first meeting of the National Climate Change Response Committee that nuclear power remains an option, but must be based upon scientific considerations and public consensus, and only when safe storage of spent nuclear fuel rods is guaranteed.
In “Pingtung has a right to be angry over nuclear” published on Thursday, Pingtung County Public Health Bureau secretary Yeh Yu-cheng (葉昱呈) wrote that “for 40 years, Pingtung County residents have been living with nuclear safety risks,” and questioned resuming operation of the Ma-anshan plant, and not two plants in northern Taiwan, suggesting a political, rather than a public health or scientific motivation behind the KMT and TPP’s amendments.
Taiwan’s three previously operational nuclear plants all used outdated technology. The future of nuclear technology lies with the more efficient, safer Generation IV reactors and small modular reactors. The debate over nuclear safety needs to distinguish between investment in the latest technologies and resumption of tired, expired equipment.
On today’s page, student Tales Hou (侯皇有) expresses desperation for the need for a rational debate on the issue, devoid of politics, emotion and agendas.
The debate is complex, and rational decisions need to be made for the sake of the nation’s future. The answer with the optimum balance of all of the considerations lies in a crystal ball that we do not have. Politics has no place in this, but guarding against the political agenda-setting requires a sophisticated awareness of all the issues, as well as a political discernment to understand where biases lie.
The two article writers set a high bar of sophistication that many experts lack, the majority of the public have no access to and what many politicians have neither the integrity nor courage to wield.
Taiwan aims to elevate its strategic position in supply chains by becoming an artificial intelligence (AI) hub for Nvidia Corp, providing everything from advanced chips and components to servers, in an attempt to edge out its closest rival in the region, South Korea. Taiwan’s importance in the AI ecosystem was clearly reflected in three major announcements Nvidia made during this year’s Computex trade show in Taipei. First, the US company’s number of partners in Taiwan would surge to 122 this year, from 34 last year, according to a slide shown during CEO Jensen Huang’s (黃仁勳) keynote speech on Monday last week.
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