Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) this month would submit a plan to restart the decommissioned Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant in Pingtung County’s Hengchun Township (恆春), setting the stage for it to begin generating electricity as early as 2028, Minister of Economic Affairs Kung Ming-hsin (龔明鑫) told a hearing at the legislature in Taipei yesterday.
Taiwan People’s Party Legislator Liu Shu-pin (劉書彬) asked Kung whether the government is considering using nuclear energy as a stable energy source in the event of a wartime blockade.
If China blockaded the Taiwan Strait, Taiwan would exhaust its natural gas reserves in 10 days, its coal reserves in seven weeks and its oil reserves in 20 weeks, leaving only 20 percent of its power generation capacity, Liu said, citing the results of a war game by a US-based think tank.
Photo: Liao Chia-ning, Taipei Times
Kung said that a safety inspection of the Ma-anshan plant is under way and that state-run Taipower is expected to submit a plan later this month to restart it.
Asked if that could happen by 2028, Kung said the government has signed a contract with Westinghouse to check the state of the plant’s generators.
If the equipment is in good condition and not too much needs to be replaced, the timeline could be shorter, he said.
Kung’s response tracked with comments he made late last year, when he estimated that safety inspections would take one-and-a-half to two years, with a report submitted to the Nuclear Safety Commission in the middle of next year and reopening in 2028 at the earliest.
Following the Tohuku earthquake, tsunami and Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear meltdown in Japan on March 11, 2011, opposition to nuclear power in Taiwan grew.
Supported by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), the anti-nuclear movement pressured the then-Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government to halt and seal the still-under-construction Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s Gongliao District (貢寮) in 2014.
After taking office in 2016, the DPP made plans for a “nuclear-free homeland” by last year.
It phased out electricity generation at the Jinshan Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s Shihmen District (石門) in 2019, at the Guosheng Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s Wanli District (萬里) in 2023 and at Ma-anshan on May 17 last year.
Under the policy, nuclear power as a share of Taiwan’s energy mix dropped from 19 percent in 2011 to nothing, with much of the gap filled by fossil fuel sources.
According to Energy Administration data, 47.8 percent of Taiwan’s energy generation last year was from natural gas, while coal accounted for 35.4 percent and renewables made up 13.1 percent.
Fuel oil, pumped hydro and the final few months of nuclear power from Ma-anshan accounted for the rest, the data showed.
Since Taipower closed the plant in Pingtung, fears of China blocking energy imports from reaching Taiwan in the event of a war, as well as issues such as air pollution and increased power demand, have prompted the government to abruptly reverse its position.
In November last year, the government said that Taipower was expected to submit plans to reopen the Guosheng and Maanshan plants.
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