The No. 2 reactor at the Guosheng Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s Wanli District (萬里) experienced a malfunction that triggered an automatic shutdown early yesterday morning, Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) said.
The exact cause of the incident is still being investigated, but there is no risk of a radiation leak, the state-run utility said.
“While we are still investigating the exact cause, the automatic shutdown was safely executed and there is no danger from radiation,” Taipower spokesman Chang Ting-shu (張廷舒) said.
Photo: CNA
The malfunction occurred at 6:33am, triggering an emergency shutdown, taking 985 megawatts of power offline, Chang said.
The control rods have now been fully lowered into the reactor and Taipower would apply with the Atomic Energy Council for the unit to be restarted as soon as the malfunction is resolved, he said.
However, it would take three days before the reactor reaches maximum output, Taipower said.
“The malfunction took place early in the morning during low power demand and it was possible for us to dispatch our reserve capacity immediately, leading to no loss of power [to the grid],” Chang said. “With the nation’s hydropower system full after the recent rains, we should be able to cope while the Guosheng Nuclear Power Plant’s No. 2 reactor remains offline.”
The operating reserve ratio is expected to remain “green,” or above 10 percent, in the coming days, but might dip into “yellow” territory, or 6 to 10 percent, during nighttime peak periods before the reactor is restarted, Taipower said.
As the mercury spiked close to 38°C, the nation’s electricity consumption reached 38.84 gigawatts (GW) at 1:50pm yesterday, with an operating reserve ratio of 10.17 percent, the company said.
The No. 1 reactor at the Guosheng power plant went offline on July 1 after the facility ran out of space to store spent nuclear fuel.
The No. 2 reactor is expected to keep generating power until March 2023, when its operating permit expires, Taipower said.
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders. Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Lunar New Year, a person familiar with the situation said. He has never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the person, who asked not to be identified, because the plans have not been announced. That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending cofounders or CEOs to the event. That includes
INDUSTRY LEADER: TSMC aims to continue outperforming the industry’s growth and makes 2025 another strong growth year, chairman and CEO C.C. Wei says Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday said it aims to grow revenue by about 25 percent this year, driven by robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips. That means TSMC would continue to outpace the foundry industry’s 10 percent annual growth this year based on the chipmaker’s estimate. The chipmaker expects revenue from AI-related chips to double this year, extending a three-fold increase last year. The growth would quicken over the next five years at a compound annual growth rate of 45 percent, fueled by strong demand for the high-performance computing
TARIFF TRADE-OFF: Machinery exports to China dropped after Beijing ended its tariff reductions in June, while potential new tariffs fueled ‘front-loaded’ orders to the US The nation’s machinery exports to the US amounted to US$7.19 billion last year, surpassing the US$6.86 billion to China to become the largest export destination for the local machinery industry, the Taiwan Association of Machinery Industry (TAMI, 台灣機械公會) said in a report on Jan. 10. It came as some manufacturers brought forward or “front-loaded” US-bound shipments as required by customers ahead of potential tariffs imposed by the new US administration, the association said. During his campaign, US president-elect Donald Trump threatened tariffs of as high as 60 percent on Chinese goods and 10 percent to 20 percent on imports from other countries.
RSS