Taipower, builder and operator of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant, rebutted allegations yesterday that the second of two reactors for the plant is defective.
Taipower officials said the newly built reactor, expected to be delivered from Japan before the end of this month, is safe and was built under strict manufacturing standards.
"There will be no safety worries regarding the reactor since there is a full series of production- and test-run records, as well as certificates issued by a number of companies responsible for accreditation," the officials said.
They said that the second reactor for the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant was designed by General Electric (GE) and built by Hitachi and Toshiba, like the first reactor. Full documentation for production- and test-runs complied with the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Codes and Standards, and the reactors had passed security and operational checks by engineers from GE and Taipower as well, they said.
The advanced boiling water reactor (ABWR) is the same model as the sixth and seventh ABWRs installed in the Tokyo Power Company's Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant in Japan's Niigata prefecture.
Japanese and Taiwanese anti-nuclear activists have threatened to disrupt the delivery of the second ABWR from Japan to Taiwan, saying that the reactors at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa facility had eight "reactor trips" in the first three-and-a-half years of operation after 1996, mostly as a result of cracks in fuel rods.
A "reactor trip" is an unscheduled shutdown that avoids overheating. Causes of reactor trips vary from mechanical to human error to acts of nature.
To avoid problems, Taipower officials said they were ensuring that the designs, materials and manufacturing processes for the two ABWRs for the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant were being changed or modified.
Taipower officials denied that the postponement of the ABWR's delivery from this Friday to the end of this month was the result of recent announcements by Taiwanese and Japanese anti-nuclear groups that they would protest its arrival in Kungliao, Taipei County.
The NoNuke Taiwan Union lodged a protest last Friday against the delivery of the second ABWR.
Union executive director Ho Tsung-hsun (
GREAT POWER COMPETITION: Beijing views its military cooperation with Russia as a means to push back against the joint power of the US and its allies, an expert said A recent Sino-Russian joint air patrol conducted over the waters off Alaska was designed to counter the US military in the Pacific and demonstrated improved interoperability between Beijing’s and Moscow’s forces, a national security expert said. National Defense University associate professor Chen Yu-chen (陳育正) made the comment in an article published on Wednesday on the Web site of the Journal of the Chinese Communist Studies Institute. China and Russia sent four strategic bombers to patrol the waters of the northern Pacific and Bering Strait near Alaska in late June, one month after the two nations sent a combined flotilla of four warships
THE TOUR: Pope Francis has gone on a 12-day visit to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore. He was also invited to Taiwan The government yesterday welcomed Pope Francis to the Asia-Pacific region and said it would continue extending an invitation for him to visit Taiwan. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs made the remarks as Pope Francis began a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific on Monday. He is to travel about 33,000km by air to visit Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore, and would arrive back in Rome on Friday next week. It would be the longest and most challenging trip of Francis’ 11-year papacy. The 87-year-old has had health issues over the past few years and now uses a wheelchair. The ministry said
‘LEADERS’: The report highlighted C.C. Wei’s management at TSMC, Lisa Su’s decisionmaking at AMD and the ‘rock star’ status of Nvidia’s Huang Time magazine on Thursday announced its list of the 100 most influential people in artificial intelligence (AI), which included Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) chairman and chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家), Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) and AMD chair and CEO Lisa Su (蘇姿丰). The list is divided into four categories: Leaders, Innovators, Shapers and Thinkers. Wei and Huang were named in the Leaders category. Other notable figures in the Leaders category included Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Meta CEO and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Su was listed in the Innovators category. Time highlighted Wei’s
EVERYONE’S ISSUE: Kim said that during a visit to Taiwan, she asked what would happen if China attacked, and was told that the global economy would shut down Taiwan is critical to the global economy, and its defense is a “here and now” issue, US Representative Young Kim said during a roundtable talk on Taiwan-US relations on Friday. Kim, who serves on the US House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee, held a roundtable talk titled “Global Ties, Local Impact: Why Taiwan Matters for California,” at Santiago Canyon College in Orange County, California. “Despite its small size and long distance from us, Taiwan’s cultural and economic importance is felt across our communities,” Kim said during her opening remarks. Stanford University researcher and lecturer Lanhee Chen (陳仁宜), lawyer Lin Ching-chi
RSS