Former premier Vincent Siew (蕭萬長) and former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) both instructed the signing of unpublished agreements with China regarding the storage of Taiwan’s nuclear waste in Gansu Province in China, a lawmaker said yesterday in a plenary session at the Legislative Yuan.
Siew, who was premier from 1997 to 2000 and later served as vice president, asked Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) to sign a nuclear waste storage deal with Beijing when he was premier, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Alex Tsai (蔡正元) said yesterday.
Tsai added that Chen, who is serving a 20-year sentence for corruption, also arranged a deal between a Taiwanese technical consulting firm and the state-owned China National Nuclear Corp (CNNC) regarding nuclear waste storage.
Tsai called on the government to use those agreements after Beijing in April expressed an interest in waste storage projects.
In response, Minister of Economic Affairs Chang Chia-juch (張家祝) confirmed that a memorandum of understanding was signed when Siew was premier.
However, Premier Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) said that the agreement was suspended after the transfer of power in 2000.
The government does not rule out any possibility in handling the nation’s nuclear waste, Jiang said, but added that several factors would have to be included in the decisionmaking process, including Washington’s position on the matter.
Tsai first mentioned CNNC’s interest in handling Taiwan’s nuclear waste in a plenary session on April 9, when he told Jiang that the company had offered to store Taiwan’s nuclear waste in its storage site in Gansu Province.
Jiang said he had no information on the offer, adding that “politically, it would not be a feasible option.”
INFRASTRUCTURE: Work on the second segment, from Kaohsiung to Pingtung, is expected to begin in 2028 and be completed by 2039, the railway bureau said Planned high-speed rail (HSR) extensions would blanket Taiwan proper in four 90-minute commute blocs to facilitate regional economic and livelihood integration, Railway Bureau Deputy Director-General Yang Cheng-chun (楊正君) said in an interview published yesterday. A project to extend the high-speed rail from Zuoying Station in Kaohsiung to Pingtung County’s Lioukuaicuo Township (六塊厝) is the first part of the bureau’s greater plan to expand rail coverage, he told the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times). The bureau’s long-term plan is to build a loop to circle Taiwan proper that would consist of four sections running from Taipei to Hualien, Hualien to
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