Russia should end its invasion of Ukraine, cease attacks on nuclear power plants and avoid armed conflict near nuclear facilities, National Nuclear Abolition Action Platform members told a news conference at the Legislative Yuan yesterday.
The group issued a statement on Sunday condemning Russia over its invasion of Ukraine and for risking a nuclear crisis by attacking a Ukrainian nuclear power plant.
As of yesterday, more than 50 civic groups in Taiwan have endorsed the statement.
Photo: Hsieh Chun-lin, Taipei Times
The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southeast Ukraine caught fire after an attack last week, and a rise in radiation has been detected at the defunct Chernobyl nuclear facility, seized by Russian troops last month.
Ukrainian government officials on Wednesday said that emergency diesel generators were powering critical systems at the Chernobyl plant due to damage caused by Russian attacks.
The platform hosted the news conference ahead of the 11th anniversary of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant disaster today.
Ukraine has 15 active nuclear reactors, which generate 51 percent of the country’s electricity, the platform said in the statement.
Green Citizens’ Action Alliance secretary-general Tsuei Su-hsin (崔愫欣) said that this is the first war in a country heavily reliant on nuclear power, adding that nuclear power plants and areas contaminated by radiation have become military targets.
“Nuclear power facilities are not designed to withstand wars. If a nuclear power plant is under attack, it could lead to large-scale nuclear contamination, and ecological systems and human health will suffer lasting harm,” she said.
Several buildings at the Zaporizhzhia facility, Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, caught fire on Thursday last week after Russian shelling, Homemakers United Foundation director Wu Hsin-ping (吳心萍) said.
Although the reactor was reported to have been safely shut down, it does not mean the plant does not pose any risk, she said.
Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Dmytro Kuleba had warned that damage caused by a disaster at the Zaporizhzhia plant could be 10 times worse than that of the Chernobyl disaster, Wu said.
“Based on these events, we hope that Taiwan sees the importance of diversifying energy sources, increasing energy storage facilities and developing smart power grids. These measures would better prepare us to cope with various emergency situations,” she said.
“We also urge countries with nuclear weapons to refrain from using them and avoid causing a humanitarian crisis,” Wu said.
Mom Loves Taiwan secretary-general Yang Shun-mei (楊順美) said that nuclear power plants become fragile and dangerous in a war or in a natural disaster, adding that spent nuclear fuel and high-level nuclear waste could lead to a crisis.
“We can never be safe if we leave nuclear waste untreated,” she said.
The government should inform the public what it plans to do with the mothballed Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s Gongliao District (貢寮), she said.
“Instead of spending millions of dollars annually to preserve the asset, the government should show how it plans to cope with challenges posed by climate change, and implement a structural transformation of Taiwan’s energy system,” Yang said.
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