Opponents of nuclear power yesterday said that they would call on the government to transform its energy policy and criticized a forum planned by proponents of nuclear power as “fake.”
Former premier Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) last month reiterated his support for nuclear energy and announced that the Fair Winds Foundation — of which he is chairman — would hold an energy forum on Sunday together with former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) foundation.
However, opponents of nuclear energy said the forum’s title, “Civic Energy Conference,” is misleading, as it was used in previous conferences on phasing out nuclear power and promoting renewable energy sources.
The forum is being planned by former KMT bureaucrats and groups with vested interests in the development of nuclear power, therefore it should be titled “civic nuclear power conference,” Green Citizens’ Action Alliance secretary-general Tsuei Su-hsin (崔愫欣) told a news conference in Taipei.
Civic energy conferences were convened in 1998, 2009 and 2015 in response to momentous events related to energy policy, Taiwan Environmental Protection Union (TEPU) founding chairman Shih Shin-min (施信民) said.
They plan to host another conference this year to obtain consensus on phasing out nuclear power, given that a referendum to abolish the legal basis for the government’s goal of achieving a “nuclear-free homeland by 2025” was passed on Nov. 24 last year, sparking controversy, Shih said.
The nuclear power opponents’ conference on Monday would remember victims of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant disaster on its eighth anniversary, help people living near nuclear power plants voice their objection to nuclear energy and discuss how Taiwan might proceed to phase out nuclear power and promote energy transition, the TEPU said.
As for two new referendum proposals filed by the Nuclear Myth Busters group founder Huang Shih-hsiu (黃士修) and nuclear power advocate Liao Yen-peng (廖彥朋), including one seeking to resume construction on the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant, Shih said the government should not waste more funds on that “money pit.”
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