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
Weeks into the craze, nobody quite knows what to make of the OpenClaw mania sweeping China, marked by viral photos of retirees lining up for installation events and users gathering in red claw hats. The queues and cosplay inspired by the “raising a lobster” trend make for irresistible China clickbait. However, the West is fixating on the least important part of the story. As a consumer craze, OpenClaw — the AI agent designed to do tasks on a user’s behalf — would likely burn out. Without some developer background, it is too glitchy and technically awkward for true mainstream adoption,
On Monday, a group of bipartisan US senators arrived in Taiwan to support the nation’s special defense bill to counter Chinese threats. At the same time, Beijing announced that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had invited Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) to visit China, a move to make the KMT a pawn in its proxy warfare against Taiwan and the US. Since her inauguration as KMT chair last year, Cheng, widely seen as a pro-China figure, has made no secret of her desire to interact with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and meet with Xi, naming it a
Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) took the stage at a protest rally on Sunday in front of the Presidential Office Building in Taipei in support of former TPP chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲), who has been sentenced to 17 years in jail for corruption and embezzlement. Huang told the crowd that Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) had sent a message of support the previous day, saying she would be traveling from the south to Taipei: If the protest continued into the evening, she had said, she would show up. The rally was due to end
A delegation of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) officials led by Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) is to travel to China tomorrow for a six-day visit to Jiangsu, Shanghai and Beijing, which might end with a meeting between Cheng and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). The trip was announced by Xinhua news agency on Monday last week, which cited China’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) Director Song Tao (宋濤) as saying that Cheng has repeatedly expressed willingness to visit China, and that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Central Committee and Xi have extended an invitation. Although some people have been speculating about a potential Xi-Cheng
RSS