Taiwan yesterday was buffeted by Typhoon Kong-rey, the strongest typhoon to make landfall since 1996. Early last month, Typhoon Krathon came knocking. It is not the strength of the typhoon that is surprising; it is that they both happened so late in the year.
In recent years, typhoons have become increasingly sparse, leading to concerns about water shortages from reduced annual rainfall. This year, the surprise comes from the tardy arrival of typhoons. It is as if the term “typhoon season” has lost its relevance.
Typhoons, at least up to this point, have been largely predictable, and eminently possible to prepare for. Climate change — and the faster-than-expected arrival of extreme weather events around the world — is changing this.
That is the challenge for national governments — not necessarily to foresee the unforeseeable, but to prepare for all contingencies over the long-term.
We knew of the importance of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) and semiconductor manufacturing for Taiwan’s economy, but awareness of this has exploded since the COVID-19 pandemic and the spotlight this threw on the global semiconductor supply chain.
Five years ago, there was little talk of artificial intelligence (AI) as a technological — even a civilizational — game-changer; now it is the focus of government policy looking to transform Taiwan into an “AI hub,” and along with it, the realization of the importance of ensuring an adequate and stable energy supply.
Taiwan is going through a transitional period of transforming its energy mix. The government is attempting to remove nuclear power from that mix, and the timeline for achieving a “nuclear-free homeland” was set for 2025 a decade ago. That is next year.
Meanwhile, power demand is certain to increase, by some estimates by an average of 2.8 percent a year through 2033, mainly due to the AI sector and the expansion of TSMC’s semiconductor manufacturing.
That prediction is for what would happen a decade from now, but nobody knows exactly how much the world, technology, renewable energy sources and power requirements would have changed in five years, let alone 10.
During a briefing at in the Legislative Yuan on Taiwan’s energy situation, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said the government remains open to the question of retaining a nuclear power component in the nation’s energy mix, adding that this would be contingent on whether issues of safety, effective radioactive waste disposal and public trust could be resolved.
These conditions were in line with comments made by President William Lai (賴清德) in August during the first meeting of the National Climate Change Response Committee. That is, nuclear power is still on the table, but whether or not Taiwan continues to use it depends on practical considerations and a science-based approach informing a debate to secure a public consensus.
The die is already cast for the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant in Pingtung County. The plant’s no. 2 reactor is Taiwan’s only operational reactor at the moment, but its license expires in May next year, and when it does, according to the Nuclear Reactor Facilities Regulation Act (核子反應器設施管制法), it is to be decommissioned.
This is good news from a safety perspective. As Cho said in the briefing, Taiwan proper is a small, densely populated island that sits on an active geological fault. It is encouraging that the government is keeping the safety aspect very much in mind, even while keeping all options on the table, instructing the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Taiwan Power Co to retain nuclear power-qualified personnel just in case.
In the briefing, Cho added that there were promising fields of nuclear energy and that, while these could not be anticipated ahead of time, the government would have a better sense of this in 2030.
One would hope that there is a more substantial plan in place than that.
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