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Nuclear disaster
waiting to happen
By Adam Chimienti
In the 1980s, the now disbanded Long Island Lighting Company was working with
the US federal government on plans to turn the eastern half of Long Island, in
New York state, into a nuclear park, with a total of 11 plants to be built. They
failed in their efforts and thankfully so.
Then-US president Ronald Reagan’s energy secretary was insistent on opening the
plants that had been built in Shoreham on the island.
He said that if the already constructed plants did not open, the nuclear
industry would be in trouble, while if they did, the industry would celebrate a
new era.
Driving past the defunct plant today, the first “stillborn” of its kind in the
US, one can eerily sense what might have been.
In October last year, Hurricane Sandy would have knocked out the power supplies
to at least a few of those 11 planned sites. The US would then have had its very
own Fukushima Dai-ichi-style nuclear disaster on the outskirts of its most
populated and economically significant city.
The key reasons these plants were not finished were the grassroots efforts and a
combination of legal, political and activist initiatives, including New York
state’s use of eminent domain. These activists were able to get the Suffolk
County legislature to vote against the required evacuation plan.
The densely populated island, which includes two boroughs of New York City, has
more than 7 million inhabitants. Evacuating this many people would have been
impossible. Does this situation not sound familiar?
Taiwan’s history of nuclear power, and Taiwan Power Co’s role in it, has been
marred by accidents, mismanagement and corruption, according to
environmentalists throughout the nation.
Considering the regularity of typhoons and intensity of recent storms, Taiwan’s
position as a nuclear state is precarious.
In the days after the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant disaster,
then-premier Wu Den-yih’s (吳敦義) statement about the fourth-generation reactors
that were operational in the nation revealed precisely the kind of
overconfidence that was visible in Japan before the Fukushima Dai-ichi disaster.
WikiLeaks released US State Department documents that revealed the concern the
International Atomic Energy Agency had about Japan’s reactors and their ability
to withstand major earthquakes. It also showed the Japanese Nuclear and
Industrial Safety Agency’s reaction to a judicial order to close down a plant in
the western part of the country because it was only capable of handling an
earthquake of magnitude 6.5 or below. That court order was eventually
overturned.
Moreover, David Yuen, professor in the department of Earth Sciences at the
University of Minnesota, and other scientists have pointed out that the world’s
most problematic earthquake and tsunami area, where a triple disaster like
Japan’s could occur, is located south of Taiwan.
These experts are referring to the huge buildup of energy in the Manila Trench,
where a major earthquake has not occurred in hundreds of years and is expected
in the foreseeable future.
This should have Taiwanese concerned for their homeland.
The nation’s innovative recycling schemes and remediation of the environment has
impressed the world over. Yet it seems this hard work in righting the wrongs of
modern industrialism has been overshadowed by the threat of the use of a
dangerous source of energy. As one Taiwanese economist said two years ago, the
nation would be destroyed by a level 7 on the International Nuclear Event Scale.
As in the case of Long Island, the Atomic Energy Council knows that it cannot
successfully stage an evacuation of the Taipei metro area, so why is a 17
percent amount of the power supply worth such a risk?
This failure to guarantee safety is salient when innovation, conservation and
renewable energy sources could easily become the deciding factor for Taiwan as
they are in Germany’s ongoing nuclear phase-out, and Japan’s successful
weathering of two months without nuclear power last year.
Instead of continually looking at costs that would result from a breach of
contract at the Longmen (龍門) plant the nation’s leaders should consider the
potential costs that would result from what some experts think could be an
inevitable catastrophe.
Long Island’s activists have been eager to share their successful strategies
with other states trying to close down dangerous nuclear plants. Perhaps
Taiwan’s activists can learn from them. Maybe those lessons could hold the key
for a nuclear-free Taiwan.
The undeniable powers of logic, justice and hope are squarely on the side of the
antinuclear movement in Taiwan and the rest of the world. On this upcoming
anniversary of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear disaster and with a fateful
referendum on the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s (新北市) Gongliao
District (貢寮) likely, now is the time for Taiwanese to win a victory that will
become a reference point for other movements around the world.
Adam Chimienti is a doctoral candidate at National Sun Yat-sen University’s
Institute of China Asia Pacific Studies.
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