The second reactor at the Guosheng Nuclear Power Plant was operating at full capacity at 10:30am yesterday after resuming operations on Wednesday, state-run Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) said.
It was the first time the reactor at the plant in New Taipei City’s Wanli District (萬里) has operated at full capacity in more than two years.
It went offline in May 2016, following a glitch in its electrical system during major maintenance work, and resumed operations on March 27, but automatically shut down the following day after it developed another glitch.
Taipower on April 9 submitted a request to the Atomic Energy Council to restart the reactor. After convening several review meetings and conducting an on-site inspection on June 4, the council approved the restarting of the reactor.
It resumed power generation on June 8 and by Tuesday it was operating at 60 percent capacity, before being temporarily shut down later that day after a connector was found to be operating at an excessively high temperature.
At full capacity, the reactor can generate 985 megawatts of electricity, equal to about 2.7 percent of the nation’s total operating reserve margin — the percentage of generating capacity available to the power grid that can be called upon quickly, Taipower spokesperson Hsu Tsao-hua (徐造華) said.
A fully operational reactor would give Taipower more flexibility in supplying power during the hot summer months, when demand for power peaks, Hsu said.
Taipower could also consider reducing power generation at thermal power plants to reduce air pollution, depending on air quality conditions, he said.
The government has promised a nuclear-free homeland by 2025, when the three operating nuclear plants are scheduled to have been decommissioned.
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
DEFENDING DEMOCRACY: Taiwan shares the same values as those that fought in WWII, and nations must unite to halt the expansion of a new authoritarian bloc, Lai said The government yesterday held a commemoration ceremony for Victory in Europe (V-E) Day, joining the rest of the world for the first time to mark the anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe. Taiwan honoring V-E Day signifies “our growing connections with the international community,” President William Lai (賴清德) said at a reception in Taipei on the 80th anniversary of V-E Day. One of the major lessons of World War II is that “authoritarianism and aggression lead only to slaughter, tragedy and greater inequality,” Lai said. Even more importantly, the war also taught people that “those who cherish peace cannot
RSS