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Taipower’s stress
test fraudulent: DPP
‘LYING ALL THE WAY’: Seven members of the peer
review panel for the nation’s three nuclear power plants were either
unauthorized or ineligible, DPP lawmakers said
By Chris Wang and Lee I-chia / Staff reporters
Democratic Progressive Party
legislators Chen Ou-po, Yeh Yi-jin and Huang Wei-che hold a press conference in
Taipei yesterday, alleging that the Atomic Energy Council purchased a forged
report on pressure measurements at nuclear power plants in Taiwan.
Photo: Chien Jung-fong, Taipei Times
The credibility of state-owned Taiwan
Power Co (Taipower, 台電) took another hit after allegations of an allegedly
fraudulent stress test report and a corruption probe involving a transformer
procurement deal, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers said yesterday.
Citing media reports and remarks from Green Consumers Foundation chairman Jay
Fang (方儉), DPP Legislator Chen Ou-po (陳歐珀) told a press conference that Taipower
“has been lying all the way about its performance and nuclear safety.”
Fang and the media reports accused Taipower of hiring uncertified panelists to
conduct a “peer review” stress test for the Organisation for Economic
Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) on the three
active nuclear power plants in Taiwan in March.
The six Europeans who conducted the tests were not authorized by the European
Nuclear Safety Regulators Group (ENSREG) to conduct such a review and
France-based Atomic Energy Council (AEC) representative Loa Wei-whua (羅偉華) was
ineligible for the panel because he is Taiwanese, Fang said, citing ENSREG
regulations.
“Since the money for the peer review came from AEC’s donations to the OECD,
Taipower effectively spent government money to ‘purchase’ the report, which gave
positive comments on Taiwan’s nuclear safety,” Chen said.
Chen also blasted Taipower’s white paper for the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in
Gongliao District (貢寮), New Taipei City (新北市), which rejected environmentalists’
description of the plant as a “self-assembled vehicle” and said Taiwan would be
subject to electricity rationing as early as 2015, which contradicts an estimate
by Premier Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺), who said the rationing could begin in 2017.
DPP Legislator Huang Wei-cher (黃偉哲) said Taipower’s “game-fixing” tactic has
again tarnished the company’s image after various reports of corruption, with
the latest coming from the company’s Taiwan Power Research Institute in New
Taipei City’s Shulin District (樹林), where more than a dozen staffers are being
investigated for allegedly receiving benefits from a transformer procurement
deal.
In response, the AEC at a separate setting yesterday said that the AEC member on
the peer review specialist list did not take part in the actual technical
review.
The council’s Department of Nuclear Regulation director Chen Yi-pin (陳宜彬) said
that due to the nation’s ambiguous international status, a request for the
International Atomic Energy Agency to establish a peer review team to conduct a
stress test last year was rejected by the agency.
However, both the NEA and the ENSREG had agreed to form an independent peer
review team for the task, he said, adding that the test report finished in March
was by the NEA team and the ENSREG review is scheduled to take place in
September.
Chen Yi-pin added that Loa was marked as an “AEC liaison” in the report and was
only in charge of administrative and communication work.
Chen Yi-pin said the report was written according to the required standard of
the ENSREG’s stress test and the NEA’s independent peer review team was formed
by experts according to the three fields suggested by the ENSREG’s stress test
standards.
He added that the ENSREG’s review team will consist of nine members and is
scheduled to visit the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant in Pingtung County’s Ma-anshan
(馬鞍山) and the yet-to-be-completed Fourth Nuclear Power Plant.
He said the ENSREG asked Greenpeace to suggest five organizations for civic
participation, adding that the five that would be invited are the Taiwan
Environmental Protection Union, the Green Citizens’ Action Alliance, the
Nuclear-Free Homeland Alliance, the Green Consumers Foundation and anti-nuclear
writer Liu Li-erh (劉黎兒).
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