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.
The central bank and the US Department of the Treasury on Friday issued a joint statement that both sides agreed to avoid currency manipulation and the use of exchange rates to gain a competitive advantage, and would only intervene in foreign-exchange markets to combat excess volatility and disorderly movements. The central bank also agreed to disclose its foreign-exchange intervention amounts quarterly rather than every six months, starting from next month. It emphasized that the joint statement is unrelated to tariff negotiations between Taipei and Washington, and that the US never requested the appreciation of the New Taiwan dollar during the
The diplomatic dispute between China and Japan over Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s comments in the Japanese Diet continues to escalate. In a letter to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, China’s UN Ambassador Fu Cong (傅聰) wrote that, “if Japan dares to attempt an armed intervention in the cross-Strait situation, it would be an act of aggression.” There was no indication that Fu was aware of the irony implicit in the complaint. Until this point, Beijing had limited its remonstrations to diplomatic summonses and weaponization of economic levers, such as banning Japanese seafood imports, discouraging Chinese from traveling to Japan or issuing
Since leaving office last year, former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) has been journeying across continents. Her ability to connect with international audiences and foster goodwill toward her country continues to enhance understanding of Taiwan. It is possible because she can now walk through doors in Europe that are closed to President William Lai (賴清德). Tsai last week gave a speech at the Berlin Freedom Conference, where, standing in front of civil society leaders, human rights advocates and political and business figures, she highlighted Taiwan’s indispensable global role and shared its experience as a model for democratic resilience against cognitive warfare and
The diplomatic spat between China and Japan over comments Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi made on Nov. 7 continues to worsen. Beijing is angry about Takaichi’s remarks that military force used against Taiwan by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) could constitute a “survival-threatening situation” necessitating the involvement of the Japanese Self-Defense Forces. Rather than trying to reduce tensions, Beijing is looking to leverage the situation to its advantage in action and rhetoric. On Saturday last week, four armed China Coast Guard vessels sailed around the Japanese-controlled Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台), known to Japan as the Senkakus. On Friday, in what
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