A fourth televised public debate about restarting the recently decommissioned Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant next to Ma-anshan (馬鞍山) in Pingtung County was held yesterday, ahead of a national referendum on the controversial issue in less than two weeks.
A referendum on Saturday next week is to ask voters if they agree that “the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant should continue operations upon approval by the competent authority and confirmation that there are no safety concerns.”
Taiwanese who are 18 years old or older can vote in the referendum.
Photo courtesy of the Central Election Commission
The vote comes just three months after the power plant’s final reactor shut down on May 17, officially making Taiwan nuclear-free.
Taiwan People’s Party Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) represented the side in favor, while 20-year-old university student Wu Ya-hsin (吳亞昕) represented the opposition.
Addressing concerns about whether nuclear power plants represent a national security vulnerability, Huang cited a report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a US think tank, that said Taiwan’s energy grid lacks resilience and needs nuclear power.
The report, a war game simulation of a Chinese blockade, said that the government’s decision to shut down the reactor for environmental reasons “greatly increased Taiwan’s energy vulnerability.”
The Democratic Progressive Party knows it should not abandon nuclear energy, as President William Lai (賴清德) last year confirmed that the government has contingency plans to maintain nuclear power capabilities, Huang said.
Huang downplayed concerns about the disposal of nuclear waste, saying that the Ministry of Economic Affairs has already engaged with nuclear disposal facilities in Europe for assistance.
A new technology, deep borehole disposal (DBD), is safe and feasible, and well suited for Taiwan’s small land area, dense population and plate tectonics, he said.
DBD is not a theoretical breakthrough — it is a turning point for nuclear policy, he added.
The Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant can still hold 562 bundles of nuclear rods, enough to power the plant for three cycles of 18 months each, or about five years in total, he said.
The plant is also finalizing plans to construct a new storage facility that would allow it to continue operating without concerns, he said, adding that the claim that its service life can only be extended by four to five years is “completely false.”
Wu brought up the example of Japan’s Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant disaster.
Fourteen years later, 24,000 residents still cannot return home due to concerns about radiation, and at least 300 young people have developed thyroid cancer, she said.
She read out loud a letter from a resident of Fukushima, which mentioned the numbers and stated that a nuclear accident can have consequences for up to a century.
Many people claim nuclear power is inexpensive and clean, but the Fukushima experience shows that costs and recovery time in the aftermath of an accident are enormous, she added.
She cited the latest report by Taiwan Power Co saying that the Ma-anshan reactors lie only 900m from a fault, adding that when the plant was first built, geological knowledge lagged far behind what it is today.
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