The government has no plans to bring forward the commercial operations of the fourth nuclear power plant as safety remains its top priority, Executive Yuan spokesman Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) said.
Chiang dismissed local media reports that Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) had asked the plant's builders to move its scheduled opening from the end of next year to Oct. 10 to coincide with the country's 100th founding anniversary next year.
Chiang said the premier was briefed by officials from the Ministry of Economic Affairs, the Atomic Energy Council and Taiwan Power Company earlier on Friday on the plant's construction progress, and Wu instructed them to monitor its building to ensure its safety.
Chiang quoted Wu as telling the officials at the meeting that “we've already waited 10 years, so there's no need to rush the work at the expense of the plant's safety.”
Chiang said Wu had put Executive Yuan Secretary-General Lin Join-sane (林中森) in charge of coordinating government agencies involved in the building of the plant to ensure it meets rigorous safety standards.
Chiang made the comments after Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Tien Chiu-chin (田秋堇) called on the premier to refrain from pushing the plant's opening date.
Tien said the safety of the plant has been the cause of great public concern after its control room was gutted by a fire in March. Taiwan Power Company attributed the accident to an electrical short.
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
A bipartisan group of US senators has introduced a bill to enhance cooperation with Taiwan on drone development and to reduce reliance on supply chains linked to China. The proposed Blue Skies for Taiwan Act of 2026 was introduced by Republican US senators Ted Cruz and John Curtis, and Democratic US senators Jeff Merkley and Andy Kim. The legislation seeks to ease constraints on Taiwan-US cooperation in uncrewed aerial systems (UAS), including dependence on China-sourced components, limited access to capital and regulatory barriers under US export controls, a news release issued by Cruz on Wednesday said. The bill would establish a "Blue UAS
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