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Perils of nuclear
power ignored
By Tsui Shu-hsin 崔愫欣
A few days ago, New Taipei City (新北市) Mayor Eric Chu (朱立倫) and Taipei Mayor Hau
Lung-bin (郝龍斌) made headlines by declaring one after another that the Fourth
Nuclear Power Plant — the Longmen (龍門) Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s
Gongliao District (貢寮) — which is still being built, would not be allowed to go
into operation if its safety can not be guaranteed.
No other country in the world would dare to build a nuclear power plant as close
to its capital city as the Longmen plant is to Taipei, still less three nuclear
power plants, as there will be if the Longmen plant goes into operation
alongside the two existing plants on the north coast.
As the top leaders of greater Taipei’s twin municipalities, Chu and Hau are a
bit late in making such a statement so long after the disastrous meltdown at
Japan’s Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in March last year. However,
until the Longmen plant goes into operation, there is still time to do something
about it.
The safety of the Longmen plant has long been in doubt and a 5,000-character
report about it, published by Fourth Nuclear Power Plant Safety Monitoring
Committee member Lin Tsung-yao (林宗堯) in 2009, sparked widespread consternation
in Taiwan as people realized just how fraught with problems the project really
is.
There have been numerous hitches in the construction of the plant over the last
few years. Following relentless coverage of the issue by media and environmental
groups, the Control Yuan went so far as to propose corrective measures and
initiate impeachment proceedings in relation to these accidents. However, the
Ministry of Economic Affairs and the state-run Taiwan Power Co (Taipower), have
stubbornly refused to admit their mistakes. They know that doing so would
inevitably put the whole Longmen plant construction project in doubt, and they
fear that blame for the accidents would be assigned to the officials
responsible, and that they might even face prosecution.
For this reason, up until now, none of the top leaders of the Chinese
Nationalist Party (KMT) have dared to criticize the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant
project. It came as a surprise to many, therefore, that Chu and Hau, who are
both KMT members, should make the statements they did. Probably a lot of people
are puzzled as to why they did so, but anyone who has even a little knowledge of
what has been going on behind the scenes knows how far things have gone wrong
with the plant. It has become a financial drain and a big burden for the
authorities, and government and opposition parties now all recognize that the
plant will never be safe.
If nuclear disasters happen anywhere, then no matter how slight the chances of
them happening may be, nuclear power cannot be called safe. However new and well
built a nuclear power plant may be, therefore, thought should still be given to
closing it down, and this is all the more true of a problem-plagued and
dangerous construction project like the Longmen plant.
Considering how unsafe the plant is, how can government leaders find their way
out of this mess? President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) assures the public that the plant
will only be allowed to go into operation if it is safe, but does that really
mean that it will not go into operation if it is not safe? Furthermore, who can
guarantee that it is indeed safe? Could it be that our president knows that the
Longmen plant has problems, yet does not appreciate the price that will have to
be paid if it turns out not to be as safe as it is cracked up to be?
Our leaders’ pledges that the plant will only be allowed to go into operation if
its safety can be guaranteed are really an empty promise that cannot be kept.
The Longmen plant has been under construction for well over a decade, costing
more than NT$200 billion (US$6.84 billion) in public funds so far, and we still
do not know when it will finally be completed. There is no knowing how much
bigger the budget will grow, and the public cannot be sure about the safety and
quality of the building work.
Taipower says that the Longmen power station will commence operations only after
it is approved by an international atomic energy organization and with the
agreement of the government departments in charge.
Considering that the government departments in charge have been overseeing the
construction of the plant for all these years and the project is still such a
shambles, the officials responsible should consider themselves lucky if they do
not end up in jail. What is for sure is that they have long since lost all
credibility.
As to the “international atomic energy organization” that Taipower refers to, it
is the World Association of Nuclear Operators (WANO), which is an inspection
agency set up by corporations in the same line of business as Taipower. Many
doubts have been raised around the world about the role of WANO and its
objectivity.
Examination and approval by overseas companies in the atomic energy businesses
are no guarantee of safety. The clearest illustration of this is the Fukushima
Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, which passed an inspection as recently as 2009.
Following the meltdown at Fukushima, all kinds of faults in the power station
came to light, whereupon everybody realized that the inspections the plant had
undergone had simply been a formality.
The situation we have reached today is that the government is employing delay
tactics to over the Longmen plant. Glibly dismissing the faults and mistakes of
the past, the government seeks to evade its responsibility by handing the task
of verifying the plant’s operational safety over to so-called international
experts. If only things were so simple!
The fact is that nobody can guarantee that the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant will
be safe.
It would be a good thing if the government could honestly confront the issues at
hand. In order to shed the historic burden of the Longmen plant, the first
things that need to be done are to delve into the mistakes and malpractices that
have plagued the construction project, and to stop adding more items and more
money to it.
The next thing that needs to be done is to make a serious plan for implementing
the proposals outlined by environmental groups at the National Climate Change
Conference in June for zero growth in Taiwan’s electricity generation and
consumption. Industry needs to be restructured in a way that gives priority to
saving energy, so as to make possible a long-term energy outlook that does not
include nuclear power.
Once that has been done, the next task will be to look into what is to be done
with the Longmen site. Should it be returned to its original state, or used to
build a different kind of power plant instead? Or should it be made into a
center for research into submarine geology? It could even be converted into an
amusement park or museum, serving both touristic and educational functions, as
has been done in Germany.
The key point is that the government must be sincere. The issue of the plant’s
safety has become a serious problem that cannot be resolved. The government
should make public all information about the safety issue and about how much
more time and money will have to be spent on the plant so that people can decide
for themselves about the positive and negative aspects of the project.
The government should also give the public open access to information about the
makeup of power generation costs, so that people can go beyond the war of words
over the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant and instead engage in a proper discussion
about whether it should go on being built or be scrapped altogether.
Tsui Shu-hsin is secretary-general of the Green Citizens’ Action Alliance,
Taiwan.
Translated by Julian Clegg
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