Kungliao residents are putting down their protest placards and picking up law books in their efforts to fight the construction of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant (
Now that the DPP government has caved in on the power plant issue, residents of Kungliao, where the plant is located, have given up hopes for a political solution to the battle against the nuclear plant.
Instead, residents are working with a group of law school professors and lawyers to uncover administrative flaws in the plant's construction, which has dragged on for roughly two decades.
"We believe the whole project should be reviewed according the Administrative Procedure Law that went into effect on the first of this year," Chen Hwei-syin (陳惠馨), one of group's leaders, told the Taipei Times.
Chen, a law professor at National Chengchi University, said that members of the group will review administrative defects in the project's approval process.
"For example, why was it that Taipower (
Chen said the group would ask the Cabinet to provide an answer to that question.
In addition, the legal experts plan to gather information about one of the most controversial aspects of the project -- the plant's Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA).
As early as 1995, activists have protested the fact that the plant's two planned reactors were changed from 1,000 megawatts each to 1,350 megawatts -- though no new EIA was ever performed to reflect the switch.
In addition, the Control Yuan in 1995 censured seven administrative units -- including the Cabinet, the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) and the Atomic Energy Council (AEC) -- because a second EIA had not yet been performed.
At the time, the censure was ignored by the then KMT-led Cabinet, which supported the project.
In addition, in March 1999, the AEC issued a construction license for the plant, even though it had still not dealt with the Control Yuan's censure.
Environmentalists applaud the legal strategy and say the government is ignoring potential threats that the proposed nuclear plant poses to public safety.
"We believe that the project will eventually be cancelled for its failure to pass a re-assessment," said Lai Wei-chieh (賴偉傑), secretary-general of the Green Citizens Action Alliance.
In addition to the change in the wattage of the two reactors, there have been several other changes that may warrant a new EIA.
"For example, a temporary repository for radioactive waste is under construction at the site. That's not originally part of the project," Lai said.
Lai said that the alliance plans to organize Kungliao residents to petition new EPA head Hau Lung-bin (
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