While pushing for the review of a draft act for a nuclear-free homeland, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators yesterday raised the possibility of a nation-wide referendum on the issue.
After a bipartisan agreement reached in June, the draft act for a nuclear-free homeland is to be listed as one of the priority acts in the current legislative session.
DPP Legislator Kao Jyh-peng (高志鵬), who is behind the referendum effort, said Article 16 of the Referendum Act (公民投票法) stipulates that “if the Legislative Yuan deems it necessary to carry out a referendum on a matter as prescribed in Subparagraph 3 of Paragraph Two of Article 2, it may hand the main text and the statement of reasons, after they are adopted in the meeting of the Legislative Yuan, to the Central Election Commission to implement the referendum.”
The World Nuclear Association (WNA) listed the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant — which is still under construction — as one of the 14 most dangerous nuclear power plants worldwide, Kao said.
Taiwan is not starved for electricity and yet it has the highest concentration of nuclear power plants in the world, he said.
According to WNA statistics, nuclear power supplies a quarter of base-load power and 17 percent of total output nationwide, though it takes up only 11 percent of all gigawatt-electrical (GWe) installed capacity.
Citing 2008 production figures as an example, the WNA said coal-fired plants comprised 26 percent of the capacity and 38 percent of the total power, which means that out of the 238 billion kilowatt- hours (kWh) produced that year, nuclear power plants accounted for 40.8kWh in gross figures of power production.
At peak usage, electricity reserves were still at 32 percent, and reserves from off-peak hours were about 50 percent, Kao said.
As such, even if the first, second and third nuclear power plants were to stop operations, there would be enough electricity for use nationwide.
There is no need to continue using aging nuclear power plans, to say nothing of the fourth plant, which is a slap-dash job, Kao said.
He also said that the total investment originally earmarked for the fourth plant stood at about NT$169 million (US$5.7 million), but after numerous additions to the budget, it was now close to NT$300 million.
The fourth plant is a black hole into which the government has been pouring money and construction should cease, Kao said.
The Taipei Zoo on Saturday said it would pursue legal action against a man who was filmed climbing over a railing to tease and feed spotted hyenas in their enclosure earlier that day. In videos uploaded to social media on Saturday, a man can be seen climbing over a protective railing and approaching a ledge above the zoo’s spotted hyena enclosure, before dropping unidentified objects down to two of the animals. The Taipei Zoo in a statement said the man’s actions were “extremely inappropriate and even illegal.” In addition to monitoring the hyenas’ health, the zoo would collect evidence provided by the public
A decision to describe a Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement on Singapore’s Taiwan policy as “erroneous” was made because the city-state has its own “one China policy” and has not followed Beijing’s “one China principle,” Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Tien Chung-kwang (田中光) said yesterday. It has been a longstanding practice for the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to speak on other countries’ behalf concerning Taiwan, Tien said. The latest example was a statement issued by the PRC after a meeting between Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財) and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on the sidelines of the APEC summit
A road safety advocacy group yesterday called for reforms to the driver licensing and retraining system after a pedestrian was killed and 15 other people were injured in a two-bus collision in Taipei. “Taiwan’s driver’s licenses are among the easiest to obtain in the world, and there is no mandatory retraining system for drivers,” Taiwan Vision Zero Alliance, a group pushing to reduce pedestrian fatalities, said in a news release. Under the regulations, people who have held a standard car driver’s license for two years and have completed a driver training course are eligible to take a test
Taiwan’s passport ranked 34th in the world, with access to 141 visa-free destinations, according to the latest update to the Henley Passport Index released today. The index put together by Henley & Partners ranks 199 passports globally based on the number of destinations holders can access without a visa out of 227, and is updated monthly. The 141 visa-free destinations for Taiwanese passport holders are a slight decrease from last year, when holders had access to 145 destinations. Botswana and Columbia are among the countries that have recently ended visa-free status for Taiwanese after “bowing to pressure from the Chinese government,” the Ministry
RSS