A group of academics on Tuesday held a news conference in Taipei to voice opposition to restarting the decommissioned Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant in Pingtung County. On Saturday, voters would decide on a referendum proposed by the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) to bring the plant — the last of Taiwan’s nuclear facilities to be shuttered — back online.
At a rally on Saturday last week, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) said that Taiwan cannot secure enough clean energy without nuclear power. At a debate three days earlier, TPP Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) cited a report by the US-based Center for Strategic and International Studies that said Taiwan’s power grid lacks resilience and needs nuclear energy. The report, based on a war game simulation of a Chinese blockade, said that shutting down the reactor for environmental reasons “greatly increased Taiwan’s energy vulnerability.” Downplaying nuclear waste concerns, Huang said that deep borehole disposal technology is safe, practical and well-suited for Taiwan.
However, National Taiwan University geology professor Chen Wen-shan (陳文山) said the Ma-anshan plant is just 900m from a tectonic fault line and rests on a relatively young geological layer that could amplify seismic risk. While spent fuel rods could theoretically be stored underground, no site surveys have been performed. Taiwan’s constant crustal compression might even trap the rods underground, making retrieval impossible, he added.
National Chung Hsing University environmental engineering professor Tsuang Ben-jei (莊秉潔) said that if the Ma-anshan plant were restarted and damaged in a disaster, there was a 70 percent chance the surrounding area would become a permanent exclusion zone, which would be especially severe in Taiwan, where only one-third of its mountainous terrain is habitable.
Another risk is military conflict. A nuclear plant could become a target during a confrontation with China, or be damaged amid missile strikes even if not deliberately attacked. Russia has repeatedly hit Ukraine’s power grid, and there is little reason to believe China would refrain from similar tactics. That undermines Huang’s argument that a blockade would make Taiwan vulnerable without nuclear power. The presence of nuclear plants could create an even greater danger.
That is where renewable energy shows its strength: decentralization. Unlike a single nuclear facility, distributed energy systems are harder to disable in a single strike and more resilient to natural disasters. Taiwan already generates 14.3 gigawatts from solar power, a figure the government aims to expand. Early wind farm installations suggest that offshore and onshore wind could achieve comparable or greater capacity, if regulatory and local hurdles can be overcome.
Meanwhile, an onshore wave-energy pilot project at Yilan County’s Port of Suao could be scaled up if successful, while geothermal and waste-to-energy systems have passed initial tests. Used together, these renewable sources could provide energy redundancy across Taiwan’s grid, without the catastrophic risks posed by nuclear power or the environmental damage from spent fuel rods.
To secure the nation’s energy future, the government should accelerate investment in sustainable energy and grid modernization. A resilient and self-sufficient power system is not only vital to reducing reliance on imported fuels, but also to bolstering national security and protecting Taiwan’s globally important semiconductor industry.
Nuclear power is often framed as a shortcut to energy security. In reality, it trades one vulnerability for another: replacing import dependence with seismic risk, generating radioactive waste and creating potential wartime targets. By contrast, renewables offer a path to stability, safety and independence — and should be Taiwan’s priority.
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