Premier Lin Chuan’s (林全) June order to reactivate the fallow No. 1 reactor at the Jinshan Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s Shihmen District (石門) was prompted mainly by a power shortage “crisis” engineered by Taiwan Power Co (Taipower), according to former national policy adviser Rex How (郝明義).
How on Saturday said on Facebook that he suspected that Taipower deliberately ordered 10 percent of the nation’s aging electricity generators to undergo annual repairs on May 31, when the mercury hit 37.3°C, pushing the nation to the brink of a power shortage.
With power rationing on the horizon, Lin ordered Taipower to reactivate the Jinshan plant’s No. 1 reactor, which had been unused for 18 months, How said.
The decision triggered protests from groups that advocate a nuclear-free Taiwan, which President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) administration has pledged to bring about.
In the post, How cited Taipower data saying that on May 31, Taipower’s peak supply was 34.99 gigawatts (GW), just 0.57GW above the peak consumption of power that day.
How then quoted Taipower chairman Chu Wen-chen (朱文成) as saying that his company was able to function that day because business clients were encouraged to save 0.4GW in consumption under a program offering incentives to industrial users that cut electricity use during peak hours.
However, 3.14GW of electricity output — 9 percent of peak supply on May 31 — was unavailable because of the scheduled repair and maintenance of many old generators at various power plants, How said.
“With nearly 10 percent of the nation’s power generators being repaired as part of annual maintenance how could it not put pressure on power supplies?” How asked.
He said Taipower certainly knew that the weather begins to get hotter in May.
“So why did it arrange for annual repairs that would affect 10 percent of power generators late in May? … If it had not done that, would it have to ‘borrow’ 0.4GW of electricity from business clients? Doesn’t this mean that Taipower itself deliberately created a crisis of power shortage?” How wrote.
His accusation drew mixed responses from netizens.
One called his attention to the fact that most of Taiwan’s power generators require an average of one to two months of repairs per year, which means between 8.3 percent and 16.6 percent of them are undergoing maintenance at any given time.
“How would do better to understand that the ‘industrial traits’ of these numbers indicate a good performance rather than something to blame on the part of Taipower,” the netizen wrote.
“Will How give Taipower some advice on which months are the best for the annual repair of the generators?” another netizen wrote.
A small number of Taiwanese this year lost their citizenship rights after traveling in China and obtaining a one-time Chinese passport to cross the border into Russia, a source said today. The people signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of neighboring Russia with companies claiming they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, the source said on condition of anonymity. The travelers were actually issued one-time-use Chinese passports, they said. Taiwanese are prohibited from holding a Chinese passport or household registration. If found to have a Chinese ID, they may lose their resident status under Article 9-1
Taiwanese were praised for their composure after a video filmed by Taiwanese tourists capturing the moment a magnitude 7.5 earthquake struck Japan’s Aomori Prefecture went viral on social media. The video shows a hotel room shaking violently amid Monday’s quake, with objects falling to the ground. Two Taiwanese began filming with their mobile phones, while two others held the sides of a TV to prevent it from falling. When the shaking stopped, the pair calmly took down the TV and laid it flat on a tatami mat, the video shows. The video also captured the group talking about the safety of their companions bathing
PROBLEMATIC APP: Citing more than 1,000 fraud cases, the government is taking the app down for a year, but opposition voices are calling it censorship Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday decried a government plan to suspend access to Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu (小紅書) for one year as censorship, while the Presidential Office backed the plan. The Ministry of the Interior on Thursday cited security risks and accusations that the Instagram-like app, known as Rednote in English, had figured in more than 1,700 fraud cases since last year. The company, which has about 3 million users in Taiwan, has not yet responded to requests for comment. “Many people online are already asking ‘How to climb over the firewall to access Xiaohongshu,’” Cheng posted on
A classified Pentagon-produced, multiyear assessment — the Overmatch brief — highlighted unreported Chinese capabilities to destroy US military assets and identified US supply chain choke points, painting a disturbing picture of waning US military might, a New York Times editorial published on Monday said. US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s comments in November last year that “we lose every time” in Pentagon-conducted war games pitting the US against China further highlighted the uncertainty about the US’ capability to intervene in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. “It shows the Pentagon’s overreliance on expensive, vulnerable weapons as adversaries field cheap, technologically
RSS