DPP Blindly Scrapping Nuclear Power, Taiwan Cannot Be Sacrificed by Being Buried Alive Together

  DPP Blindly Scrapping Nuclear Power, Taiwan Cannot Be Sacrificed by Being Buried Alive Together

China Times Editorial (Taipei, Taiwan)

October 23, 2018

 Translation of an Excerpt

When Premier Lai Ching-te declared "using Guantang in exchange for Shenao," the Tsai government's energy policy, together with the professionalism and credibility of its energy team, went bankrupt, but Taiwan's future cannot go bankrupt. The time to change has arrived; the rational forces of society must abandon "nuclear-free homeland" and support the steady approach of using nuclear energy to nurture green energy.

Confronted with the rapidly deteriorating climate change problem, the global trend has long been not "nuclear-free," but "carbon reduction and coal-free"; nuclear energy has been deemed as the clean energy source that is conducive to reducing carbon emissions. Various countries are still using and continuing to build new nuclear power plants; the Tsai government and environmental groups, however, are so obtuse in responding to the new global trends, even losing consciousness.

Many of the anti-nuclear reasons of the DPP have been proven to be erroneous, being even only fear out of ignorance of science and technology; a country’s energy policies cannot be erected on ignorance and errors. As soon as the Tsai government discards the "anti-nuclear totem," changing from the comprehensive scrapping of nuclear energy to using nuclear energy to nurture green energy, the energy policy can immediately be extricated. Extending the commissioning of Nuclear Power Plants No. 1 and 2, plus the de-mothballing and commercial operation of Nuclear Power Plant No. 4, there would immediately be 6 million megawatts of nuclear power ready for use; the expenditures needed will be lower than that of green energy or building new LNG power plants, and the cost of power generation will also be lowered. Additional generators at the Datan LNG Power Plant, a third LNG terminal, and the Shenao coal-fired power plant can all be scrapped. The extension of commissioning of Nuclear Power Plant No. 3 in the south, on the other hand, can allow the chip wafer plant at the Tainan Science Park (the new high energy-consuming plant of TSMC) not to worry about power shortages. If the DPP does not squarely address this problem and insists on the comprehensive scrapping of nuclear energy, it is possible to cut off Taiwan’s future. It is high time that the DPP government turned around!

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