Changes to the Referendum Act (公民投票法) mean that from Aug. 28 a national referendum can be held once every two years. Referendum proposals that have passed the second signature threshold include restarting construction of the mothballed Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s Gongliao District (貢寮); banning the importation of pork containing ractopamine; binding referendums to presidential and legislative elections; and providing enhanced protections to algal reefs off the coast of Taoyuan.
Central Election Commission (CEC) Chairman Lee Chin-yung (李進勇) has said that every additional referendum adds approximately NT$180 million (US$6.37 million) to the budget — a not insignificant sum.
There are two reasons the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant referendum should not be held:
First, the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant is near the capital: This is extremely rare and raises serious questions about safety.
On March 11, 2011, an earthquake off the east coast of Japan triggered a massive tsunami that overwhelmed the sea defenses of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant. Radiation leaks from the plant’s reactors forced the evacuation of 154,000 people from the immediate and surrounding areas.
Following the disaster, Tokyo-based Taiwanese writer Liu Li-erh (劉黎兒) wrote an article that was published in the Taiwanese media, relating concerns about the safety of Taiwan’s civil nuclear power industry by Japanese writer Takashi Hirose and a number of Japanese specialists.
The safety concerns were related to Taiwan’s Jinshan and Guosheng nuclear power plants in New Taipei City being within a 30km radius of urban population centers that are home to 6 million residents.
In contrast, there were only 170,000 people living within a 30km radius of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant.
Second, the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant has taken longer to build than any other nuclear power station in the world, spanning three decades of stop-start construction.
The budget for the plant was originally set at NT$169.7 billion, but this later jumped to NT$283.9 billion.
The project has also suffered the most delays of any infrastructure project in Taiwan’s history and is also the most costly nuclear power plant project in the world.
The main reason for this was the ill-conceived splitting up of the project and division among sub-contractors, which resulted in an unmanageable 1,000 tender processes.
Design changes, construction errors, corruption and embezzlement, the repeated halting and restarting of construction, and delays have drained the public’s confidence in the plant. The Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant disaster further compounded the public’s fears over safety.
The initiators of the referendum for starting the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant claim that nuclear power is needed to provide the nation with an abundant source of “clean energy.”
However, the wording of the proposed referendum fails to mention two major risks inherent in starting the plant. Despite this glaring omission, the CEC has approved the referendum.
Furthermore, by ignoring the safety of residents in Taipei and New Taipei City, the mainly Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) politicians who are vigorously supporting the referendum not only show that they have clearly not done their homework, they also appear to be perfectly willing to use it as a cynical ploy to attract votes.
Jang Show-ling is chairperson of the Public Economics Research Center at National Taiwan University.
Translated by Edward Jones
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
In an article published on this page on Tuesday, Kaohsiung-based journalist Julien Oeuillet wrote that “legions of people worldwide would care if a disaster occurred in South Korea or Japan, but the same people would not bat an eyelid if Taiwan disappeared.” That is quite a statement. We are constantly reading about the importance of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC), hailed in Taiwan as the nation’s “silicon shield” protecting it from hostile foreign forces such as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and so crucial to the global supply chain for semiconductors that its loss would cost the global economy US$1
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
Sasha B. Chhabra’s column (“Michelle Yeoh should no longer be welcome,” March 26, page 8) lamented an Instagram post by renowned actress Michelle Yeoh (楊紫瓊) about her recent visit to “Taipei, China.” It is Chhabra’s opinion that, in response to parroting Beijing’s propaganda about the status of Taiwan, Yeoh should be banned from entering this nation and her films cut off from funding by government-backed agencies, as well as disqualified from competing in the Golden Horse Awards. She and other celebrities, he wrote, must be made to understand “that there are consequences for their actions if they become political pawns of
RSS