Before meeting with Premier Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) in Taipei yesterday afternoon, members of local civic groups living near nuclear waste storage sites said that they are dissatisfied with the government’s unilateral decisionmaking process and urged it to have real negotiations with the public.
The groups — from New Taipei City (新北市), Lanyu (蘭嶼, also known as Orchid Island), and Taitung and Pintung counties — said in front of the Executive Yuan that during their first meeting with Jiang on April 3, he promised to establish a negotiation forum comprised of government and civic representatives to discuss policies for final disposal of radioactive spent fuel.
However, Taitung Anti-Nuclear Alliance Secretary-General Su Ya-ting (蘇雅婷) said there were no communications regarding the forum for several months afterward, and when the alliance finally received a notice for yesterday’s meeting, its agenda had already been set.
“We feel as if the government has already decided the policies and we are only being asked to come and endorse their plans,” Su said, while showing a copy of the meeting agenda.
“Moreover, while Minister Without Portfolio Steven Chen (陳士魁) was assigned as the forum’s convener, he has been transferred to another position, leaving us even more concerned about whether the forum can really function,” she added.
Sinan Mavivo, secretary-general of the Tao Foundation, said people living in Lanyu are very concerned about the low-level nuclear waste which has been stored on the island since 1981, but the Ministry of Economic Affairs has kept delaying its removal and refused to reconvene its steering committee for the Lanyu storage site’s relocation.
“We ask the government, Taiwan Power Co and the ministry to remove the nuclear waste immediately,” she said. “We don’t need them to talk about formulating a new schedule for relocation and related inspections; we just ask them to remove it now.”
Green Party Taiwan member Wang Chung-ming (王鐘銘) said the government has failed to finalize locations for building permanent nuclear waste repositories for the past seven years, but has kept using the matter as an excuse to postpone the promised removal of nuclear waste from Lanyu.
The party urged the government to decouple the two issues and deal with the Lanyu storage facility’s relocation immediately.
Northern Coast Anti-Nuclear Action Alliance chairperson Hsu Fu-hsiung (許富雄) said a dry cask storage facility for highly radioactive spent fuel waste from the Jinshan Nuclear Power Plant in Shihmen District (石門), New Taipei City (新北市), is due to go into testing next month, but the alliance fears that salt corrosion may cause radioactive leaks because the storage site is near the ocean.
Although Taipower has claimed the site is only for temporary storage, local residents are concerned that once spent fuel rods are placed in storage, there may be no likelihood of Taipower moving them to a final disposal site, Hsu said. He added that residents should be allowed to decide whether they want the facility in the area via a referendum.
“It is a fact that disposal of nuclear waste is an intractable problem in Taiwan, so we want to tell the government that while the problem remains unresolved, it shouldn’t allow nuclear power plants to operate, as they are adding to disposal problems,” Wang said.
TRAGEDY: An expert said that the incident was uncommon as the chance of a ground crew member being sucked into an IDF engine was ‘minuscule’ A master sergeant yesterday morning died after she was sucked into an engine during a routine inspection of a fighter jet at an air base in Taichung, the Air Force Command Headquarters said. The officer, surnamed Hu (胡), was conducting final landing checks at Ching Chuan Kang (清泉崗) Air Base when she was pulled into the jet’s engine for unknown reasons, the air force said in a news release. She was transported to a hospital for emergency treatment, but could not be revived, it said. The air force expressed its deepest sympathies over the incident, and vowed to work with authorities as they
A tourist who was struck and injured by a train in a scenic area of New Taipei City’s Pingsi District (平溪) on Monday might be fined for trespassing on the tracks, the Railway Police Bureau said yesterday. The New Taipei City Fire Department said it received a call at 4:37pm on Monday about an incident in Shifen (十分), a tourist destination on the Pingsi Railway Line. After arriving on the scene, paramedics treated a woman in her 30s for a 3cm to 5cm laceration on her head, the department said. She was taken to a hospital in Keelung, it said. Surveillance footage from a
BITTERLY COLD: The inauguration ceremony for US president-elect Donald Trump has been moved indoors due to cold weather, with the new venue lacking capacity A delegation of cross-party lawmakers from Taiwan, led by Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), for the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump, would not be able to attend the ceremony, as it is being moved indoors due to forecasts of intense cold weather in Washington tomorrow. The inauguration ceremony for Trump and US vice president-elect JD Vance is to be held inside the Capitol Rotunda, which has a capacity of about 2,000 people. A person familiar with the issue yesterday said although the outdoor inauguration ceremony has been relocated, Taiwan’s legislative delegation has decided to head off to Washington as scheduled. The delegation
Another wave of cold air would affect Taiwan starting from Friday and could evolve into a continental cold mass, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Temperatures could drop below 10°C across Taiwan on Monday and Tuesday next week, CWA forecaster Chang Chun-yao (張竣堯) said. Seasonal northeasterly winds could bring rain, he said. Meanwhile, due to the continental cold mass and radiative cooling, it would be cold in northern and northeastern Taiwan today and tomorrow, according to the CWA. From last night to this morning, temperatures could drop below 10°C in northern Taiwan, it said. A thin coat of snow
RSS