|
PROFILE: Veteran
activist laments KMT policy
By Tang Chia-ling and Jake Chung / Staff reporter, with staff
writer
Taiwan Environmental Protection
Union Chairperson Shih Hsin-min holds up a booklet on the history of the
environmental protection movement in Taiwan on May 18.
Photo: Tang Chia-ling, Taipei Times
Taiwan Environmental Protection Union
founding chairperson Shih Hsin-min (施信民) said that in his almost three decades
of anti-nuclear activism, the only thing he lamented was that the Chinese
Nationalist Party’s (KMT) support for nuclear power has never wavered.
Now 66 years old, Shih said that the nation’s first anti-nuclear power activists
were academics, adding that his first protest was in front of the Taipower
Building with renowned academics Chai Song-lin (柴松林), Huang Ti-yuan (黃提源) and
former union head Chang Kuo-long (張國龍).
“I have been subjected to wire-taps from the government and I have been
threatened by criminal groups, but nothing will stop me from fulfilling my duty
to society as one of its intellectuals,” Shih said in a recent interview, adding
that it was this conviction that has fueled his activism over the past 27 years.
Taiwan’s society has changed since he first protested against the government’s
nuclear power policy, Shih said, adding that so too had the focus of Taiwanese.
“Anti-nuclear sentiment is now on the rise in public and anti-nuclear power
gatherings and marches — previously seen as political statements — are now
occurring throughout the nation, facilitated by the Internet or other events
held by environmental protection groups,” Shih said, referring to the period
prior to 1986 when the KMT was the sole political party in Taiwan and all
dissidents were known as dangwai (黨外) or “outside the [KMT] party.”
“People now are starting to understand what the anti-nuclear program is all
about, even if they don’t use the Internet,” he added.
Shih said that statements from Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) are changing as well.
“Back in the day, Taipower always said that Chernobyl happened because it was
built by the Soviet Union and because it did not have a containment building;
they said that nuclear power plants built by the US could not suffer such
catastrophic outcomes, and at most would be a repeat of the Three Mile Island
incident,” Shih said.
Chernobyl is considered to be one of the worst nuclear disasters in history, and
was the first to have been rated level 7 on the International Nuclear Event
Scale.
During the Three Mile Island incident on March 28, 1979 — named after the island
with the same name in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania — the nuclear power plant
suffered a partial meltdown in one of its reactors.
The incident is considered to be the worst commercial nuclear power accident in
US history.
However, Shih said that the more recent nuclear disaster at Japan’s Fukushima
Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in March 2011 showed that even if a nuclear core is
stored within a containment building, hydrogen explosions can still occur.
The Fukushima nuclear disaster was partially caused by a tsunami that was
generated by a magnitude 9 earthquake.
The flooding of the emergency generators at the plant caused the pumps
circulating coolant water to the reactors to stop working and the reactors to
melt down due to the heat from radioactive particle decay.
Shih said that despite Taipower’s claims that Taiwanese nuclear power plants
have more countermeasures than the Fukushima plant, many of the systems would
not have enough time to be used in an emergency situation.
Shih said he sought to influence the government’s thoughts on the issue through
protests, recommendations and various anti-nuclear power events.
“It took me nearly three decades and the one thing I lament the most is that the
KMT is still not coming round, “ he said.
However, Shih still tries to be optimistic, adding that he had succeeded once
during a brief span of 110 days in 2000 when the Executive Yuan under
then-president Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) administration ordered a halt to the
construction of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s (新北市)
Gongliao District (貢寮).
“We’ve succeeded once before and it doesn’t matter when we succeed again next —
but of course, the sooner the better,” he said. “We should stay strong to our
own ideals, especially when it is the right thing to do.”
|
