Antinuclear groups said yesterday the platform for communicating with the Executive Yuan — established last year for discussing the treatment of nuclear waste — is a failed mechanism and that they would no longer attend meetings because the government has no intention or ability to deal with the issue.
More than a dozen people from the groups made the announcement yesterday afternoon in front of the Executive Yuan’s front gate, which was fenced with barbed wire barricades and protected by a line of police holding shields and batons.
The groups came to an agreement with Premier Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) in April last year to form a communication platform to discuss issues concerning the treatment of nuclear waste.
Photo: Lo Pei-der, Taipei Times
After Jiang on Monday morning announced a halt to construction of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s Gongliao District (貢寮), Minister of Economic Affairs Chang Chia-juch (張家祝) said on the same day that a postponement to the retirement of the three operating nuclear power plants would be discussed.
Northern Coast Anti-Nuclear Action Alliance executive committee member Wang Chung-ming (王鐘銘) said the groups would stop communicating with the government through the mechanism because the government has made no progress over the past year.
He said they had urged for low-level radioactive waste to be removed from the storage facility in Lanyu (蘭嶼) as its lease had expired, civic participation in deciding on locations for spent nuclear fuel dry cask storage facilities, no extension on the lifespan of currently operating nuclear power plants and no construction of a nuclear waste depository in eastern Taiwan, where less electricity is used.
“[The Executive Yuan] is incapable of dealing with nuclear waste, stalling and not doing anything,” the groups chanted outside the Executive Yuan.
Tao Foundation (蘭嶼部落文化基金會) secretary-general Sinan Mavivo said: “I have been dumb enough to believe the government when it promised to move the waste away ... but our hope has turned into despair.”
“We’re fed up,” Green Citizen Action Alliance deputy secretary-general Hung Shen-han (洪申翰) said. “After one year, the government still has no plan to meet our demands, and even said it needs more time to study the issue, but local residents just want to feel safe when they sleep.”
“If the government is incapable of solving the nuclear waste problems, then why extend the lifespan of nuclear power plants and create more nuclear waste?” Hung asked.
Northern Coast Anti-Nuclear Action Alliance chief executive Kuo Ching-lin (郭慶霖) said: “When we use nuclear fuel rods for five years, the toxic danger threatens future generations for hundreds of thousands of years, so why does anyone want to use nuclear power?”
He said that since he was a child, the plants have been constructed, and for the past few decades, the groups have been trying different ways to convince the government of the danger.
Nuclear policy is being controlled by certain groups who benefit from it, “but the government never listens to us,” Kuo said.
Dumping envelopes filled with documents from various meetings with government agencies from his bag, Kuo said people have called him irrational for participating in antinuclear social movements, such as occupying Zhongxiao W Road on Sunday.
“It is because efforts made through the legal system and during countless meetings were all neglected,” he said.
“A few days ago, my daughter said she has not eaten a meal cooked by me for a long time,” Kuo said, adding that its not that they like being busy and protesting all the time, but they are fighting for the safety of the public against the government, which is forcing legislators to back up its policies.
He said the government is creating division and hatred among people by stigmatizing antinuclear protesters by calling them “hijackers.”
The groups said they will continue to fight against nuclear power at the local level in various ways in their hometowns.
A strong continental cold air mass and abundant moisture bringing snow to mountains 3,000m and higher over the past few days are a reminder that more than 60 years ago Taiwan had an outdoor ski resort that gradually disappeared in part due to climate change. On Oct. 24, 2021, the National Development Council posted a series of photographs on Facebook recounting the days when Taiwan had a ski resort on Hehuanshan (合歡山) in Nantou County. More than 60 years ago, when developing a branch of the Central Cross-Island Highway, the government discovered that Hehuanshan, with an elevation of more than 3,100m,
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
SECURITY: To protect the nation’s Internet cables, the navy should use buoys marking waters within 50m of them as a restricted zone, a former navy squadron commander said A Chinese cargo ship repeatedly intruded into Taiwan’s contiguous and sovereign waters for three months before allegedly damaging an undersea Internet cable off Kaohsiung, a Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) investigation revealed. Using publicly available information, the Liberty Times was able to reconstruct the Shunxing-39’s movements near Taiwan since Double Ten National Day last year. Taiwanese officials did not respond to the freighter’s intrusions until Friday last week, when the ship, registered in Cameroon and Tanzania, turned off its automatic identification system shortly before damage was inflicted to a key cable linking Taiwan to the rest of
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
RSS