A former government nuclear official yesterday said that Taiwan should abandon nuclear power because it is not capable of handling nuclear waste and its regulation of nuclear activity and radiation has been awful.
“People called me a nuclear expert with a conscience, a good person. Not that I am a good guy, but the fact is that [government officials in charge of nuclear affairs] are bad guys,” said He Li-wei (賀立維), a nuclear expert who used to work at the Atomic Energy Council’s Institute of Nuclear Energy Research.
In a seminar on nuclear risk assessment organized by several anti-nuclear civic groups, He, who holds a doctorate in nuclear engineering from Iowa State University, described himself as someone who was looking for redemption with his anti-nuclear efforts.
Photo: Chien Jung-fong, Taipei Times
He delivered a 30-minute briefing on Taiwan’s nuclear waste disposal predicament, saying that the nation’s nuclear power plants would consume 30,000kg of uranium over their 40-year lifespan, compared with the 1kg of uranium in the “Little Boy” atomic bomb that the US dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.
“By the time the three active nuclear power plants are decommissioned, they will have consumed more than 4,500 tonnes of uranium and we have no idea how to deal with the spent nuclear fuel,” he said.
Unlike Finland, which stores its nuclear waste 500m underground, the situation has been especially difficult for Taiwan, which neither has the technology to handle nuclear waste nor an appropriate storage location.
What is worse has been government officials’ lies about nuclear radiation levels on Lanyu (Orchid Island, 蘭嶼), where low-level nuclear waste is stored, and the government’s lack of transparency, He said.
He said the activities of the “nuclear power community” — including National Tsing Hua University’s nuclear engineering department, Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) and the council — as something akin to “organized crime” because the council has been awarding research projects to Tsing Hua professors or retired Taipower and nuclear power plant executives as favors. These people cover up the flaws in the nuclear power plants in return, he said.
The now retired He said many professors and government officials had been his students and he “should have flunked them in my class because scientists are supposed to speak the truth, not twist data or cover up mistakes.”
Two Japanese, Katsumi Nakao of J.F. Oberlin University and Yoh Kato of Tokyo Metropolitan University, also spoke at the seminar about the handling of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant disaster.
AGGRESSION: China’s latest intrusions set a new benchmark for its ‘gray zone’ tactics and possibly a new pattern that it would attempt to normalize, a researcher said China’s latest military exercises represent a new challenge to Taiwan’s legal authority to demarcate its borders in the Taiwan Strait, a defense expert said, adding that the fleets in the latest exercises were likely the most powerful the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) ever assembled. The PLA conducted military exercises from Sunday last week to 6am on Friday, which encompassed large swathes of the western Pacific, including the Taiwan Strait and waters off the Philippines and Guam, National Policy Foundation associate research fellow Chieh Chung (揭仲) said on Friday. The Ministry of National Defense said that it detected 70 warship and 162 aircraft
DOMESTIC MARKET: To protect the livelihoods of local egg farmers, the government adopted a new method for releasing imported eggs, the agriculture minister said More than 54 million imported eggs will be disposed, as their expiration date has passed, Minister of Agriculture Chen Chi-chung (陳吉仲) said yesterday. Chen made the remarks at a news conference in Taipei, explaining the flow of imported eggs following recent controversies regarding the products. The ministry introduced a special egg import program to address a nationwide egg shortage earlier this year. However, controversies have risen in recent weeks. These included an accusation that the government helped some egg importing companies over others, eggs imported from Brazil that had an incorrect expiration date, and egg shipments from Brazil that were found
PACIFIC OCEAN: Defense experts have warned that the ‘Shandong,’ China’s second largest aircraft carrier, poses a serious threat to eastern Taiwan’s defenses The drills conducted by the Chinese aircraft carrier Shandong in the Western Pacific last week were more aimed at showcasing China’s military capabilities to the US rather than toward Taiwan, a Taiwanese defense expert said yesterday. Lin Yin-yu (林穎佑), an assistant professor at Tamkang University’s Graduate Institute of International Affairs and Strategic Studies, said the drills which involved dozens of warplanes sought to test China’s anti-access and area denial capabilities should the US and its allies attempt to interfere in a cross-strait conflict. Lin said that the latest Chinese drills coincided with a joint maritime exercise conducted by the US, South Korea
Thousands of bottles of Sriracha have been returned or destroyed after the discovery of excessive sulfur dioxide, a bleaching agent, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced on Tuesday. About 12,600 bottles totaling 9,991.8kg of the hot sauce imported from the US by Emporium Corp (河洛企業) were flagged at the border for containing illegal levels of sulfur dioxide, the FDA said in its regular border inspection announcement. Inspectors discovered 0.5g per kilogram of the common bleaching agent and preservative, higher than the 0.03g permitted, it said. As it is the first time within six months the product has been flagged, Sriracha products from
RSS