The Taiwan Power Co. (Taipower) has decided to scrap its plan to build a nuclear waste dump on the islet of Hsiaochiu, which is part of the Kinmen island group located close to China, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday.
As a substitute measure, the ministry said, Taipower is now planning to build a temporary storage facility inside each of its three nuclear power plants. The storage facilities would be able to store the low-radioactive nuclear waste now being kept on Orchid Island as well as that which is expected to be produced over the next 40 years.
Taipower's plan to build a nuclear waste dump on Hsiaochiu has met with strong opposition from residents on the frontline islet from the very beginning. Due to its proximity to China, both the Cabinet-level Atomic Energy Council and Beijing authorities have voiced disapproval with the plan.
The Commission of National Corporations under the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) has sent a letter to the Environmental Protection Administration asking it to stop an environmental impact evaluation of the Hsiaochiu dump plan.
Taipower said the storage facilities to be built inside its three nuclear power plants are provisional.
"We'll continue searching for a new site for accommodating a permanent radioactive waste dump in Taiwan in line with the Atomic Energy Council's instructions," said a Taipower executive.
All of Taipower's three nuclear power plants now in operation have provisional waste dumps. The storage capacity of the dump at the first nuclear power plant is 35,000 barrels, the capacity at the second plant is 59,000 barrels and that of the third plant is 10,000 barrels.
The three plants have produced a total of 180,000 barrels of nuclear waste. While 97,000 of them have been stored on Orchid Island off Taiwan's southeastern coast, the remaining barrels have been kept at the plants.
Taipower said the three new dumps will mainly be used to store radioactive waste to be generated over the next 40 years. As Taipower has introduced cutting-edge technologies to process nuclear waste, its annual nuclear waste production has fallen below 1,000 barrels.
The annual waste production at its third nuclear power plant is less than 30 barrels.
In the face of repeated protests from aboriginal Tao citizens, the MOEA promised in May to remove the nuclear waste from Orchid Island. Taipower said if it can't find a suitable location, it may move Orchid Island nuclear waste to its new storage facilities inside its nuclear plants.
Besides Hsiaochiu, Taipower also once studied the feasibility of building a permanent nuclear waste dump at several other domestic locations, including Tungchi Isle of the Penghu island group and Pengchiayu off the northern Taiwan coast.
Taipower will have to renew its search for a location after scrapping its Hsiaochiu plan.
Hsiaochiu residents expressed jubilation over Taipower's decision to shelve the nuclear waste dump construction plan on their homeland.
The village chief said he will seek central government support for developing the isle into a tourist attraction as it has rich marine resources and beautiful scenery.
Over the past decade, Taipower has made strenuous efforts to find a permanent nuclear waste dump, but all those efforts have so far turned out to be futile. The company has signed either cooperative agreements or memorandums of understanding on cooperation with the Marshall Islands, North Korea, Russia and even a Chinese institute for handling its low-radioactive waste.
None of these overseas storage plans has succeeded due to strong opposition from their neighboring countries or domestic environmental activists. Moreover, international law has banned the outbound shipment of toxic waste.
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