Public participation in the selection of major national technologies should be based on accurate and complete information. This should be a matter of common sense when it comes to making science and technology policies in a democracy. The controversy over the nuclear power issue has been raging for more than 30 years in Taiwan. The problem lies in the frequent failures of the government, Taiwan Power Co and nuclear experts to provide accurate information about anything nuclear. Unfortunately, although the government has initiated a referendum on the construction of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in Gongliao District (貢寮), New Taipei City (新北市), this situation remains unchanged.
On Wednesday last week, TVBS broadcast a talk show discussing the nuclear power issue. When some of the guests argued over whether there was an appropriate site for the final storage of nuclear waste, National Tsing Hua University nuclear engineering professor Lee Min (李敏) said that US President Barack Obama terminated the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository project in Nevada for political reasons. According to Lee, the project was terminated because of the great influence of US Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who represents Nevada. Lee said the termination of the project was purely a political decision, and not a matter of the US being unable to find a proper site for the final disposal of nuclear waste.
However, on March 5, 2009, the New York Times ran a story titled “Future Dim for Nuclear Waste Repository,” reporting that the site for the repository had not been selected through a scientific process of elimination.
Instead, “it was selected from a list in 1987 by Congress, which declared it dry and remote enough ... Scientific concerns have since emerged, including the realization that water flows through Yucca Mountain a lot faster than initially believed. That raises the prospect that the nuclear waste would leach over time, polluting the water table,” the paper said.
In other words, the information provided by Lee was not complete, and it left the impression that the Obama administration’s decision to close the nuclear waste site was based purely on political reasons, rather than scientific ones.
The newspaper also reported that “the scientific merit of the site has not been established by independent judges.”
This is not to imply that Lee is lying. Indeed, in light of the strong opposition to the site among Yucca Mountain residents, Obama’s decision might well help him attract votes in Nevada. Still, let us not forget that there are no nuclear power plants in Nevada. The plan to build a nuclear waste repository there is similar to Taiwan’s disposal of nuclear waste on Lanyu (蘭嶼), where there also are no nuclear power plants.
We can learn two lessons from this. First, when scientific experts who are interested parties in the issue at hand blame an issue on political distortions of science and technology, the public needs to review all the related information with caution to avoid being misled.
The second lesson is that decisionmakers and scientific experts must remember that one important reason why nuclear power has lost public credibility in Taiwan is that supporters of nuclear power frequently provide incomplete, unclear and even inaccurate information.
Nevertheless, using information that is readily available in today’s Internet age, one-sided information can be easily exposed and rebutted.
Li Shang-jen is an associate research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of History and Philology.
Translated by Eddy Chang
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
I have heard people equate the government’s stance on resisting forced unification with China or the conditional reinstatement of the military court system with the rise of the Nazis before World War II. The comparison is absurd. There is no meaningful parallel between the government and Nazi Germany, nor does such a mindset exist within the general public in Taiwan. It is important to remember that the German public bore some responsibility for the horrors of the Holocaust. Post-World War II Germany’s transitional justice efforts were rooted in a national reckoning and introspection. Many Jews were sent to concentration camps not