Anti-nuclear advocates yesterday took the Atomic Energy Council (AEC) to task for allegedly being in the dark for as long as 10 hours about an incident in the Jinshan Nuclear Power Plant’s second reactor yesterday, renewing worries about the safety of the nation’s accident-plagued nuclear facilities.
Low lube oil pressure caused a built-in lube oil pump in one of the reactor’s two recirculation pumps to trip at 4:18am, disengaging the coupling between the oil pump and a motor.
According to standard procedures at the power plant in New Taipei City’s (新北市) Shihmen District (石門)), technicians then inserted control rods, reduced the operating speed of the other recirculation pump and decreased the reactor’s power level to 250,000 kilowatts.
The reactor returned to normal operations at 1:19pm.
Asked to comment on the incident at 2pm yesterday, council spokesman and Vice Chairman Chou Yuan-ching (周源卿) said he was not aware of it.
About 30 minutes later, Chou came back with an explanation.
“Every reactor is equipped with two recirculation pumps that are each responsible for [controlling the flow of] 50 percent of the water through the core. The accident was caused by the malfunction of a lube oil pump within one of the second reactor’s recirculation pumps, causing the reactor’s capacity to decrease to about 40 percent of its normal level,” Chou said.
State-owned Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) reported the incident to the council’s Department of Nuclear Regulation immediately, Chou said.
“However, as the accident was not considered threatening to public safety, the department did not demand a shutdown or notify me,” Chou said.
Green Citizens’ Action Alliance director-general Lai Wei-chieh (賴偉傑) criticized the council’s stance, saying that given the level of public concern about nuclear safety, the council should not have listened only to Taipower’s side of the story.
“Given the First [Jinshan] Nuclear Power Plant’s relatively outdated facilities, any small problem could be a prelude to a bigger accident,” Lai said.
Green Consumers Foundation chairman Jay Fang (方儉) linked the incident to the meltdown at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in Japan in 2011, saying the meltdown was caused by a loss of coolant in reactors after power outages [triggered by an earthquake and tsunami] prevented the recirculation pumps from sending water to the cores.
Taipower should have closed the second reactor for a comprehensive examination, rather than “forcing” it to resume operation, Fang said.
“The council is supposed to be on high alert for any reactor accidents, yet it was clueless about the incident 10 hours later. I think what should be decommissioned first is not the Jinshan plant, but the council,” Fang said.
Death row inmate Huang Lin-kai (黃麟凱), who was convicted for the double murder of his former girlfriend and her mother, is to be executed at the Taipei Detention Center tonight, the Ministry of Justice announced. Huang, who was a military conscript at the time, was convicted for the rape and murder of his ex-girlfriend, surnamed Wang (王), and the murder of her mother, after breaking into their home on Oct. 1, 2013. Prosecutors cited anger over the breakup and a dispute about money as the motives behind the double homicide. This is the first time that Minister of Justice Cheng Ming-chien (鄭銘謙) has
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
TRANSPORT CONVENIENCE: The new ticket gates would accept a variety of mobile payment methods, and buses would be installed with QR code readers for ease of use New ticketing gates for the Taipei metro system are expected to begin service in October, allowing users to swipe with cellphones and select credit cards partnered with Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC), the company said on Tuesday. TRTC said its gates in use are experiencing difficulty due to their age, as they were first installed in 2007. Maintenance is increasingly expensive and challenging as the manufacturing of components is halted or becoming harder to find, the company said. Currently, the gates only accept EasyCard, iPass and electronic icash tickets, or one-time-use tickets purchased at kiosks, the company said. Since 2023, the company said it
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
RSS