A magnitude 7.5 earthquake struck Japan’s Noto region at 4:10pm on Monday, causing many ground fissures, some measuring 50m long and 30cm deep, in Nanao, Ishikawa Prefecture, according to reports in the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) and the Asahi Shimbun.
The Japanese Self-Defense Forces dispatched 1,000 personnel to help in the disaster relief, with 8,500 on standby, and the Japanese Fire and Disaster Management Agency sent 1,700 firefighters.
Tokyo Electric Power Co said the radioactive wastewater of the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant’s No. 2, 3, 6 and 7 reactors leaked, but that there was no damage or leakage outside the premises, the Japan News reported.
Activated in 1985, the
Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant has seven reactors, and its total capacity is 8.2 gigawatts, making it the largest nuclear-generating station in the world, however, it was shut down after the 2011 Tohoku earthquake.
The overflow of radioactive wastewater means that the used fuel rods were still placed in spent fuel pools without proper management, such as intermediate storage and final disposal, which is similar to the situation of the Guosheng Nuclear Power Plant in Wanli District (萬里), New Taipei City.
The used fuel rods have still not been removed from the reactors. We should be aware of the risks and consider the solution if a major earthquake strikes Taiwan.
Taiwan People’s Party presidential candidate Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) has proposed postponing the decommissioning of the
Guosheng and Ma-anshan (馬鞍山) plants, but ignored the management of high-level nuclear waste.
From the leak of radioactive wastewater caused by a major earthquake in Japan, we must think about the risk of the Guosheng Nuclear Power Plant; otherwise, politicians’ common slogan “no safety, no nuclear” is nothing but idle talk.
Chen Yi-nan is an arbitrator.
Translated by Chien Yan-ru
Donald Trump’s return to the White House has offered Taiwan a paradoxical mix of reassurance and risk. Trump’s visceral hostility toward China could reinforce deterrence in the Taiwan Strait. Yet his disdain for alliances and penchant for transactional bargaining threaten to erode what Taiwan needs most: a reliable US commitment. Taiwan’s security depends less on US power than on US reliability, but Trump is undermining the latter. Deterrence without credibility is a hollow shield. Trump’s China policy in his second term has oscillated wildly between confrontation and conciliation. One day, he threatens Beijing with “massive” tariffs and calls China America’s “greatest geopolitical
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) made the astonishing assertion during an interview with Germany’s Deutsche Welle, published on Friday last week, that Russian President Vladimir Putin is not a dictator. She also essentially absolved Putin of blame for initiating the war in Ukraine. Commentators have since listed the reasons that Cheng’s assertion was not only absurd, but bordered on dangerous. Her claim is certainly absurd to the extent that there is no need to discuss the substance of it: It would be far more useful to assess what drove her to make the point and stick so
The central bank has launched a redesign of the New Taiwan dollar banknotes, prompting questions from Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators — “Are we not promoting digital payments? Why spend NT$5 billion on a redesign?” Many assume that cash will disappear in the digital age, but they forget that it represents the ultimate trust in the system. Banknotes do not become obsolete, they do not crash, they cannot be frozen and they leave no record of transactions. They remain the cleanest means of exchange in a free society. In a fully digitized world, every purchase, donation and action leaves behind data.
A large majority of Taiwanese favor strengthening national defense and oppose unification with China, according to the results of a survey by the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC). In the poll, 81.8 percent of respondents disagreed with Beijing’s claim that “there is only one China and Taiwan is part of China,” MAC Deputy Minister Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) told a news conference on Thursday last week, adding that about 75 percent supported the creation of a “T-Dome” air defense system. President William Lai (賴清德) referred to such a system in his Double Ten National Day address, saying it would integrate air defenses into a
RSS