Any referendum on nuclear waste disposal should be weighted for proximity, rather than follow strict county boundaries, environmental groups said yesterday, as they announced the results of nationwide consultation forums.
“Our hope is that we can truly start to have a national conversation about the future of nuclear waste. We cannot provide a definitive solution on disposal, because we do not have the resources of the government, and the government itself needs to fulfill its responsibilities, while respecting citizens’ views in the process,” Green Citizens’ Action Alliance secretary-general Tsuei Su-hsin (崔愫欣) said. “This is not a long-term problem, it is already singeing our eyebrows, because the first and second nuclear plants’ internal storage facilities have already reached capacity.”
She said the anti-nuclear movement had held a total of eight separate forums across the nation on the issue of waste disposal since the annual national March rally along Ketagalan Boulevard in Taipei, with roughly 120 participants from non-governmental organizations and local residents.
Forums discussed whether to send nuclear waste abroad for storage, the criteria and processes that should be used for selecting a new national nuclear waste disposal site, which government agency should be responsible and how affected local residents should participate in the process.
Citizen of the Earth Energy and Industry Division director Tsai Hui-sun (蔡卉荀) said that whether nuclear waste should be sent abroad was the greatest point of contention.
“Lots of people felt that we should handle the waste ourselves, because we created it and exporting would only lead to further oppression for disadvantaged groups abroad. However, there were also some people who felt that because of geological conditions, it was too difficult to deal with it domestically,” she said.
The final consensus document calls for low-level waste to be disposed of domestically, and for the government to provide for medium-term disposal of high-level waste.
Any site should be chosen based primarily on safety and environmental concerns, while relevant information should be made public and also translated into Aboriginal languages, the document said, which also called for revisions to current referendum regulations to increase the influence of local residents.
Taitung County’s anti-nuclear power and nuclear waste alliance secretary-general Kuo Ching-wen (郭靜雯) said that current referendum rules would be ineffective if applied to the case of Nantian (南田), a Paiwan village next to Pingtung County which has been proposed as a disposal site.
“Taitung is a long county, and under current rules all other county residents would be able to vote on site approval, but neighbors right across the border in Pingtung would not have any say,” she said.
The consensus document calls for local residents directly affected by waste disposal facilities to be granted a veto or extra “weighted” votes in a referendum that would see participants determined by proximity to facilities rather than along county lines.
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