Operations at the Jinshan Nuclear Power Plant, in New Taipei City’s Shihmen District (石門) and the Guosheng Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s Wanli District (萬里) might be suspended in June next year when their spent fuel rod pools are full, the Atomic Energy Council (AEC) said.
In a question-and-answer session at a meeting of the Education and Culture Committee at the legislature in Taipei yesterday, AEC Minister Chou Yuan-ching (周源卿) said the nation’s two oldest nuclear plants might become inoperative earlier than expected as their storage capacity is almost full.
Chinese Nationalist Party Legislator Apollo Chen (陳學聖) asked how long the two plants could still be operational if New Taipei City Mayor Eric Chu (朱立倫) blocks a proposal to build extra repositories at the two plants to temporarily store used fuel rods — meaning the two plants could only operate at limited capacity.
“The spent fuel rod pool at Jinshan plant’s reactor No. 2 is expected to be full by June next year and the pool at Guosheng plant’s reactor No. 2 is expected to be full at about the same time. The two reactors would have to shut down without a nuclear waste storage facility,” Chou said, adding that the reactors could be reactivated if Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) is able to find storage facilities.
The two reactors are scheduled to be deactivated in July 2019 and March 2023 respectively.
The Jinshan plant No. 1 reactor, which has 15 months storage capacity, has been out of operation since December 2014 pending a probe into a loose handle found on a fuel rod cask. Its reactivation requires the AEC and Taipower to report to the Legislative Yuan, which Chen said would likely be blocked, dooming the prospect of the reactor’s reactivation before its scheduled decommissioning in December next year.
Storage capacity at the Ma-anshan (馬鞍山) Nuclear Power Plant in Pingtung County is enough for the plant to operate throughout its designed life span of 40 years, Chou said.
“Technically, there is no difficulty decommissioning nuclear plants before the design life span ends and it depends on government policy to decide on such matters,” Chou said, adding: “The AEC supports a nuclear-free policy.”
Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Cheng Li-chun (鄭麗君) said public participation and democratic process must be an integral part of the selection of a nuclear waste repository, calling on the AEC and Taipower to be more transparent and open nuclear waste issues to public discussion.
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
US President Donald Trump said "it’s up to" Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be "very unhappy" with a change in the "status quo," the New York Times said in an interview published yesterday. Xi "considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing," Trump told the newspaper on Wednesday. "But I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that," he added. "I hope he doesn’t do that." Trump made the comments in
RSS