Taiwan plans to maintain its energy policy of operating nuclear power reactors until the end of their desinged lifespan, and by using other energy sources to fill gaps in the energy supply, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday.
“Taiwan will stick to its nuclear power plant timeline. Despite differing opinions, we do not plan to shut down those reactors before of the end of their designed life cycles,” Minister of Economic Affairs Wang Mei-hua (王美花) told reporters in Taipei.
The state-run Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) has drafted several measures to secure a stable power supply, including electricity allocation plans to manage water shortages caused by climate change and surging energy costs resulting from the war in Ukraine, Wang said.
Photo: Ching Lin, Taipei Times
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on Wednesday said that its government is considering using nuclear reactors beyond their designed lifespans along with restarting idled nuclear power reactors to manage a power crisis.
“My understanding is that Japan plans to make some arrangements about the idled reactors that were shut down following the Fukushima disaster in March 2011,” Wang said.
The government has decided to shift from nuclear power and move toward green power to cut carbon emissions.
The No. 2 reactor at Guosheng Nuclear Power Plant is set to stop operation in March next year, while the No. 1 and No. 2 reactors of the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant are to close in 2024 and 2025 respectively, when they are due to reach the end of their operational lives of about 40 years.
Regulations stiputate that any adjustment to nuclear power operations be applied five years in advance, Taipower spokesman Wu Chin-chung (吳進忠) told the Taipei Times.
“The timing has passed,” he said.
COMPETITION: AMD, Intel and Qualcomm are unveiling new laptop and desktop parts in Las Vegas, arguing their technologies provide the best performance for AI workloads Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD), the second-biggest maker of computer processors, said its chips are to be used by Dell Technologies Inc for the first time in PCs sold to businesses. The chipmaker unveiled new processors it says would make AMD-based PCs the best at running artificial intelligence (AI) software. Dell has decided to use the chips in some of its computers aimed at business customers, AMD executives said at CES in Las Vegas on Monday. Dell’s embrace of AMD for corporate PCs — it already uses the chipmaker for consumer devices — is another blow for Intel Corp as the company
ADVANCED: Previously, Taiwanese chip companies were restricted from building overseas fabs with technology less than two generations behind domestic factories Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp, would no longer be restricted from investing in next-generation 2-nanometer chip production in the US, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. However, the ministry added that the world’s biggest contract chipmaker would not be making any reckless decisions, given the weight of its up to US$30 billion investment. To safeguard Taiwan’s chip technology advantages, the government has barred local chipmakers from making chips using more advanced technologies at their overseas factories, in China particularly. Chipmakers were previously only allowed to produce chips using less advanced technologies, specifically
MediaTek Inc (聯發科) yesterday said it is teaming up with Nvidia Corp to develop a new chip for artificial intelligence (AI) supercomputers that uses architecture licensed from Arm Holdings PLC. The new product is targeting AI researchers, data scientists and students rather than the mass PC market, the company said. The announcement comes as MediaTek makes efforts to add AI capabilities to its Dimensity chips for smartphones and tablets, Genio family for the Internet of Things devices, Pentonic series of smart TVs, Kompanio line of Arm-based Chromebooks, along with the Dimensity auto platform for vehicles. MeidaTek, the world’s largest chip designer for smartphones
BRAVE NEW WORLD: Nvidia believes that AI would fuel a new industrial revolution and would ‘do whatever we can’ to guide US AI policy, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp cofounder and chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) on Tuesday said he is ready to meet US president-elect Donald Trump and offer his help to the incoming administration. “I’d be delighted to go see him and congratulate him, and do whatever we can to make this administration succeed,” Huang said in an interview with Bloomberg Television, adding that he has not been invited to visit Trump’s home base at Mar-a-Lago in Florida yet. As head of the world’s most valuable chipmaker, Huang has an opportunity to help steer the administration’s artificial intelligence (AI) policy at a moment of rapid change.
RSS