Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) plans to ship its spent nuclear fuel overseas for reprocessing, possibly to France, Minister of Economic Affairs John Deng (鄧振中) reiterated yesterday.
Deng made the remark in response to a question from Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Chen Ou-po (陳歐珀) during a question-and-answer session at the Legislative Yuan.
Taiwan’s three operational nuclear power plants had, as of January, produced 17,552 spent fuel rods, and the number will grow as long as the plants remain in service, the lawmaker said.
Since Taipower is not able to handle high-level nuclear waste, the waste should be shipped to the US, since US companies built the three operational nuclear plants and supplied the nuclear fuel, the lawmaker said.
Deng said the state-owned utility has a plan to send nuclear waste overseas for reprocessing, adding that France is willing to do it.
During the meeting, Premier Simon Chang (張善政) apologized on behalf of the government to the residents of Orchid Island (Lanyu, 蘭嶼) for failing to honor its promise to remove nuclear waste from the island.
A nuclear waste storage facility was built on Lanyu in 1982, but the islands residents, most of whom are Tao Aborigines, have staged protests for years demanding that Taipower remove the waste.
In related news, the DPP yesterday reiterated its objective of a nuclear-free nation by 2025 to mark the fifth anniversary of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant disaster in Japan.
“Exploring [sources of] renewable energy and creating a nuclear-free homeland has always been the DPP’s ideology. It is not only an objective as stated in the Basic Environmental Act (環境基本法), but also the public’s consensus and a trend in global energy development,” DPP spokesperson Ruan Jhao-syong (阮昭雄) said in Taipei.
“When the new government is sworn in, we will actively move to fulfill our promise of creating a nuclear-free homeland by 2025,” he said.
To achieve the objective, the DPP insists that construction of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s Gongliao District (貢寮) should be ceased, and the lifespans of the three operating plants not be extended, he said.
The DPP would also seek to strengthen the mechanism to react to a nuclear disaster, urge Taipower to research decommissioning the existing plants and continue to search for a suitable permanent nuclear waste storage facility, Ruan said.
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