“Who covered up the rainbow in the children’s sky?” more than a thousand people sang at the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall Plaza in Taipei yesterday morning during an event organized by Mom Loves Taiwan, an association of mothers opposed to nuclear power, and nine civic anti-nuclear groups, to make a music video for an anti-nuclear song.
Mom Loves Taiwan founder Irene Chen (陳藹玲) said her group is calling on the government to find a viable nuclear waste treatment method as soon as possible, to implement energy and environmental education, and to fix a schedule and enforcement rules for achieving a nuclear-free homeland.
Writer-turned-TV host Kevin Tsai (蔡康永) said that in addition to the possible risks of a radiation leak, what worries him most is the spent nuclear fuel that the government has not yet found a way to deal with.
Photo: Lo Pei-der, Taipei Times
“It’s like handing medicine to a mother to give to her children, but telling her that its side effects can cause cancer … if we cannot deal with nuclear waste, then we cannot use nuclear power just because we want to power our air conditioners, and allow dangerous spent nuclear fuel to be stored close to where we live,” he said.
“The logic should be — if we cannot deal with nuclear waste, then we have no right to use nuclear power,” he said, adding that “once the land is contaminated [by nuclear radiation], we leave an uninhabitable ghost island to our children, so we must remind decisionmakers to stop an irreversible mistake before it is to late.”
A woman surnamed Kuo (郭), who brought her three-year-old twin sons to the event, said that after Japan’s Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear disaster, she started to think about “the kind of environment we want to leave for our children.”
Photo: Lo Pei-der, Taipei Times
“The future belongs to our children, so I want them to understand the danger of nuclear power and that the Earth needs to be protected as early as possible,” added a man surnamed Hung (洪), who brought his four-year-old and two-year-old daughters to take part in the event.
“I think the information we get from the government is always biased, so we should gain more information about the issue from the Internet or events such as this one,” he said. “I want to know whether nuclear power is necessary, and whether nuclear power is the only option or the worst option.”
Masaka Uemae, a Japanese woman from Fukushima who brought her daughter with her to Taiwan after the disaster, said that although the Japanese government suggested an evacuation zone of 30km around the damaged plant, media reports have shown high levels of nuclear radiation even at 60km from the plant and that recently 43 children from Fukushima Prefecture were suspected to have developed thyroid cancer.
At the sing-along yesterday, organizers handed out brochures on how to save electricity, such as boiling drinking water and keeping it in thermos bottles instead of keeping the hot water dispenser on all day, efforts the anti-nuclear activists said could reduce electricity consumption by 6 percent — approximately the percentage of electricity supply the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant is expected to provide.
The CIA has a message for Chinese government officials worried about their place in Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) government: Come work with us. The agency released two Mandarin-language videos on social media on Thursday inviting disgruntled officials to contact the CIA. The recruitment videos posted on YouTube and X racked up more than 5 million views combined in their first day. The outreach comes as CIA Director John Ratcliffe has vowed to boost the agency’s use of intelligence from human sources and its focus on China, which has recently targeted US officials with its own espionage operations. The videos are “aimed at
STEADFAST FRIEND: The bills encourage increased Taiwan-US engagement and address China’s distortion of UN Resolution 2758 to isolate Taiwan internationally The Presidential Office yesterday thanked the US House of Representatives for unanimously passing two Taiwan-related bills highlighting its solid support for Taiwan’s democracy and global participation, and for deepening bilateral relations. One of the bills, the Taiwan Assurance Implementation Act, requires the US Department of State to periodically review its guidelines for engagement with Taiwan, and report to the US Congress on the guidelines and plans to lift self-imposed limitations on US-Taiwan engagement. The other bill is the Taiwan International Solidarity Act, which clarifies that UN Resolution 2758 does not address the issue of the representation of Taiwan or its people in
US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo on Friday expressed concern over the rate at which China is diversifying its military exercises, the Financial Times (FT) reported on Saturday. “The rates of change on the depth and breadth of their exercises is the one non-linear effect that I’ve seen in the last year that wakes me up at night or keeps me up at night,” Paparo was quoted by FT as saying while attending the annual Sedona Forum at the McCain Institute in Arizona. Paparo also expressed concern over the speed with which China was expanding its military. While the US
SHIFT: Taiwan’s better-than-expected first-quarter GDP and signs of weakness in the US have driven global capital back to emerging markets, the central bank head said The central bank yesterday blamed market speculation for the steep rise in the local currency, and urged exporters and financial institutions to stay calm and stop panic sell-offs to avoid hurting their own profitability. The nation’s top monetary policymaker said that it would step in, if necessary, to maintain order and stability in the foreign exchange market. The remarks came as the NT dollar yesterday closed up NT$0.919 to NT$30.145 against the US dollar in Taipei trading, after rising as high as NT$29.59 in intraday trading. The local currency has surged 5.85 percent against the greenback over the past two sessions, central
RSS