Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) said yesterday it is still considering filing an appeal against a court ruling it lost after the Atomic Energy Council (AEC) charged the firm with making arbitrary changes to the design of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in Gongliao District (貢寮), New Taipei City (新北市).
The Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) reported yesterday that the Taipei High Administrative Court ruled against Taipower in an administrative lawsuit against the AEC, which imposed a fine of NT$15 million (US$500,000) on Taipower for violating Article 14 of the Nuclear Reactor Facilities Control Act (核子反應器設施管制法).
It said the AEC discovered that Taipower had arbitrarily altered as many as 700 parts of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant design, starting in 2010.
The Liberty Times report also said that Taipower claimed the changes had to be made as the result of a contract dispute with US-based General Electric, the plant’s designer, and that they would not affect safety at the plant, but that the court did not accept the company’s explanation.
In response to the court ruling, Taipower chief nuclear energy engineer and spokesperson Chai Fu-feng (蔡富豐) said the company had not decided whether it would appeal the ruling and that most of the changes made to the design had been approved by the original manufacturer.
“They [General Electric] have approved most of our methods [for altering the design],” Chai said, adding that the changes had been made before General Electric could review them because Taipower did not want to set back the construction schedule and that about 97 percent of the alterations had since been approved by the US firm.
Taipower is still communicating with General Electric on the other 3 percent, Chai said.
In addition, Taipower said it has already asked specialists to conduct a safety risk assessment on the altered design of the nuclear power plant to ensure that it is safe.
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Taiwan is stepping up plans to create self-sufficient supply chains for combat drones and increase foreign orders from the US to counter China’s numerical superiority, a defense official said on Saturday. Commenting on condition of anonymity, the official said the nation’s armed forces are in agreement with US Admiral Samuel Paparo’s assessment that Taiwan’s military must be prepared to turn the nation’s waters into a “hellscape” for the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Paparo, the commander of the US Indo-Pacific Command, reiterated the concept during a Congressional hearing in Washington on Wednesday. He first coined the term in a security conference last
A magnitude 4.3 earthquake struck eastern Taiwan's Hualien County at 8:31am today, according to the Central Weather Administration (CWA). The epicenter of the temblor was located in Hualien County, about 70.3 kilometers south southwest of Hualien County Hall, at a depth of 23.2km, according to the administration. There were no immediate reports of damage resulting from the quake. The earthquake's intensity, which gauges the actual effect of a temblor, was highest in Taitung County, where it measured 3 on Taiwan's 7-tier intensity scale. The quake also measured an intensity of 2 in Hualien and Nantou counties, the CWA said.
The Overseas Community Affairs Council (OCAC) yesterday announced a fundraising campaign to support survivors of the magnitude 7.7 earthquake that struck Myanmar on March 28, with two prayer events scheduled in Taipei and Taichung later this week. “While initial rescue operations have concluded [in Myanmar], many survivors are now facing increasingly difficult living conditions,” OCAC Minister Hsu Chia-ching (徐佳青) told a news conference in Taipei. The fundraising campaign, which runs through May 31, is focused on supporting the reconstruction of damaged overseas compatriot schools, assisting students from Myanmar in Taiwan, and providing essential items, such as drinking water, food and medical supplies,
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