Nuclear reactors last year made up 9 percent of the world’s commercial electricity, marking nuclear power’s lowest share of the global energy structure in 40 years, an environmental group said yesterday.
Green Citizens’ Action Alliance and partnered environmental groups made the remarks at a news conference in Taipei, citing The World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2025.
The study suggests that renewables remain the key to effecting the energy transition needed to deal with the challenge posed by climate change, said the group, which has been authorized by the document’s authors to publish its Chinese-language translation.
Photo: CNA
Nuclear energy’s decline in significance came despite accomplishing a record 2.9 percent growth in raw output, the highest in the technology’s history, alliance researcher Chen Shih-ting (陳詩婷) said.
Nuclear power’s share of global energy structure last year represented a 45 percent plummet from its peak of 17.5 percent in 1996, she said, adding that wind and solar energy would overtake nuclear power five years after that.
The world is expected to decommission 243 nuclear reactors by 2050, reducing nuclear energy output by 203 gigawatts, counting possible delays, Chen said.
Chen Bing-huei (陳炳輝), professor of mechanical engineering at National Taiwan University, said that totalitarian regimes are responsible for 58 of the 63 planned nuclear power plants being built globally.
Most of the reactors are commissioned by China, which still invests a higher amount in solar energy, he said.
Even the most optimistic projections showed that small modular reactors would not account for more than 5 percent of global nuclear energy generation by 2050, Taiwan Climate Action Network Research Center director Chao Chia-wei (趙家緯) said.
Such reactors require significantly higher costs, and create two to 30 times more radioactive waste compared with current-generation nuclear reactors, exacerbating nuclear energy’s problems, he said.
Academia Sinica Institute of Sociology associate research fellow Paul Jobin said that Taiwan’s growing dependence on natural gas and stalling the development of renewables underscored the nation’s “gas poisoning.”
The manufacture of the remaining 28 M1A2T Abrams tanks Taiwan purchased from the US has recently been completed, and they are expected to be delivered within the next one to two months, a source said yesterday. The Ministry of National Defense is arranging cargo ships to transport the tanks to Taiwan as soon as possible, said the source, who is familiar with the matter. The estimated arrival time ranges from late this month to early next month, the source said. The 28 Abrams tanks make up the third and final batch of a total of 108 tanks, valued at about NT$40.5 billion
Two Taiwanese prosecutors were questioned by Chinese security personnel at their hotel during a trip to China’s Henan Province this month, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said yesterday. The officers had personal information on the prosecutors, including “when they were assigned to their posts, their work locations and job titles,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesman Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said. On top of asking about their agencies and positions, the officers also questioned the prosecutors about the Cross-Strait Joint Crime-Fighting and Judicial Mutual Assistance Agreement, a pact that serves as the framework for Taiwan-China cooperation on combating crime and providing judicial assistance, Liang
A group from the Taiwanese Designers in Australia association yesterday represented Taiwan at the Midsumma Pride March in Melbourne. The march, held in the St. Kilda suburb, is the city’s largest LGBTQIA+ parade and the flagship event of the annual Midsumma Festival. It attracted more than 45,000 spectators who supported the 400 groups and 10,000 marchers that participated this year, the association said. Taiwanese Designers said they organized a team to march for Taiwan this year, joining politicians, government agencies, professionals and community organizations in showing support for LGBTQIA+ people and diverse communities. As the first country in Asia to legalize same-sex
MOTIVES QUESTIONED The PLA considers Xi’s policies toward Taiwan to be driven by personal considerations rather than military assessment, the Epoch Times reports Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) latest purge of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) leadership might have been prompted by the military’s opposition to plans of invading Taiwan, the Epoch Times said. The Chinese military opposes waging war against Taiwan by a large consensus, putting it at odds with Xi’s vision, the Falun Gong-affiliated daily said in a report on Thursday, citing anonymous sources with insight into the PLA’s inner workings. The opposition is not the opinion of a few generals, but a widely shared view among the PLA cadre, the Epoch Times cited them as saying. “Chinese forces know full well that
RSS