Chang San-cheng Clears Up Misgivings over Han’s Energy Policy/ Tsai Claims Power Shortages a Non-Issue

 Chang San-cheng Clears Up Misgivings over Han’s Energy Policy/ Tsai Claims Power Shortages a Non-Issue

Source: UDN

August 23, 2019

After Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), Kaohsiung City Mayor, also the KMT’s official Presidential candidate, announced his energy policy, eliciting criticisms, yesterday, his National Policies Advisory Group explained this policy, in an attempt to dispel misgivings. 

With regard to Han’s advocacy of de-mothballing and activating Nuclear Power Plant No. 4 (NPP No.4), Chang San-cheng (張善政), a former premier, now the chief convener of Han’s advisory group, explained that so far, less than half of the fuel rods for the mothballed NPP No. 4 had been shipped to the US, so the remaining fuel rods were still enough for the operations of its Reactor 1.

As for the nuclear waste issue, Chang stated that when he served as premier, the Cabinet adopted a draft budget bill in order to ship Taiwan’s spent fuel rods to France for refinement, condensation and solidification, but when the bill was submitted to the Legislative Yuan, the nation was under the governance of the DPP administration, so the budget bill ended up being sent back to the Economics Ministry. Chang went on to say that it was not that spent fuel rods could not be handled, but that the DPP didn’t want to do it.

President Tsai Ing-wen opined that “power shortages were a non-issue in Taiwan,” stressing that before a decision to de-mothball and activate NPP No. 4 was made, the nuclear waste problem first needed to be solved, and the methods of nuclear waste disposal should be made public. Nuclear waste disposal was something with steep costs and a high degree of difficulty, Tsai concluded.

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