Several civic groups yesterday rallied outside the legislature, urging lawmakers not to agree to a proposal to restart operations at a nuclear power plant in New Taipei City (新北市) amid concerns that its operations would threaten the lives of millions of people in the Taipei metropolitan area.
“Stop the Guosheng Nuclear Power Plant! Stop the Guosheng Nuclear Power Plant!” dozens of people representing 16 civic groups chanted as they rallied outside the legislature in the afternoon before a meeting on the proposal was scheduled to take place.
The groups included the Green Citizens’ Action Alliance (GCAA), Raging Citizens Act Now, the Taiwan International Workers’ Association, the Taiwan Environmental Protection Union and the Wild at Heart Legal Defense Foundation.
Although only a few dozen people were there, they took with them a petition with more than 8,000 signatures, asking lawmakers not to allow the nuclear power plant to resume operations.
Operations at the Guosheng Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s Wanli District (萬里) were suspended for mechanical inspections in March. However, an earthquake occurred at the time, causing seven of 120 screw bolts on the reactor to break, raising concerns among the public about whether the nuclear facility is safe.
“What happened at the nuclear power plant was very serious because this is the first case in the world where screw bolts on a nuclear reactor have broken,” GCAA deputy secretary-general Hung Shen-han (洪申翰) told the crowd. “If something as safe as screw bolts can break under Taiwan Power Co’s [Taipower] watch, how can we trust Tai-power to keep the plant’s operations safe?”
Hung added that it was especially scary since a high-ranking member of the Taipower management team was found to be cheating during safety inspections at nuclear power facilities.
“It would be better if the Guosheng Nuclear Power Plant remains shut,” Hung said.
Tsai Ya-ying (蔡雅瀅), an attorney affiliated with Wild at Heart, reminded lawmakers and the public of the consequences if a nuclear disaster like the one that occurred at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in Japan last year happened at the Guosheng plant.
“When the nuclear disaster happened at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in Japan, people living within a 30km radius of the plant were evacuated,” Tsai said. “If that happens at the Guosheng plant, the 30km radius evacuation zone would cover most of the Taipei metropolitan area with 5.8 million residents.”
She said that Taipower has been caught several times hiding information when problems occurred at nuclear power plants.
“We don’t trust it anymore. The Guosheng Nuclear Power Plant should not be allowed to resume operations,” Tsai added.
In addition to calling on the legislature to stop the nuclear power plant from resuming operations, the groups called on the central government and Taipower to be more transparent when it comes to nuclear safety issues.
Taiwan is to receive the first batch of Lockheed Martin F-16 Block 70 jets from the US late this month, a defense official said yesterday, after a year-long delay due to a logjam in US arms deliveries. Completing the NT$247.2 billion (US$7.69 billion) arms deal for 66 jets would make Taiwan the third nation in the world to receive factory-fresh advanced fighter jets of the same make and model, following Bahrain and Slovakia, the official said on condition of anonymity. F-16 Block 70/72 are newly manufactured F-16 jets built by Lockheed Martin to the standards of the F-16V upgrade package. Republic of China
Taiwan-Japan Travel Passes are available for use on public transit networks in the two countries, Taoyuan Metro Corp said yesterday, adding that discounts of up to 7 percent are available. Taoyuan Metro, the Taipei MRT and Japan’s Keisei Electric Railway teamed up to develop the pass. Taoyuan Metro operates the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport MRT Line, while Keisei Electric Railway offers express services between Tokyo’s Narita Airport, and the Keisei Ueno and Nippori stations in the Japanese capital, as well as between Narita and Haneda airports. The basic package comprises one one-way ticket on the Taoyuan MRT Line and one Skyliner ticket on
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
A pro-Russia hacker group has launched a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack on the Taiwanese government in retaliation for President William Lai’s (賴清德) comments suggesting that China should have a territorial dispute with Russia, an information security company said today. The hacker group, NoName057, recently launched an HTTPs flood attack called “DDoSia” targeting Taiwanese government and financial units, Radware told the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times). Local tax bureaus in New Taipei City, Keelung, Hsinchu and Taoyuan were mentioned by the hackers. Only the Hsinchu Local Tax Bureau site appeared to be down earlier in the day, but was back
RSS