By Esme Yeh / Staff reporter
The government should lift restrictions on operations of completed nuclear power plants and refrain from excessively subsidizing renewable energy to relieve Taiwan Power Co’s (Taipower) financial deficit, lawmakers and environmental groups said at a news conference in Taipei yesterday.
The US and Japan are going back to nuclear energy, as it ensures a low-cost, stable supply of power, Taiwan People’s Party Legislator Chang Chi-kai (張?楷) said, citing American Institute in Taiwan Director Raymond Greene.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Huang Chien-hao (黃健豪) said that claims by many politicians that “no nuclear safety, no nuclear energy” is a “red herring,” as no Taiwanese have sustained physical harm from nuclear waste since the nation’s first nuclear power plant went online in 1978.
The Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant is pictured in Pingtung County’s Hengchun Township on Oct. 21 last year.
Photo: Tsai Tsung-hsien, Taipei Times
However, air quality worsened and lung cancer rates have increased over the past few years as more fossil fuel-fired electricity was generated in line with the “nuclear-free homeland” policy, Huang said.
Although nuclear waste is a pollutant, fossil fuel power stations cause air pollution, while solar panels and materials for wind power are pollutants as well, he said.
“Each way of generating power has risks, and we should choose the one that poses the least risk to society and helps society advance,” he said.
KMT Legislator Alicia Wang (王育敏) said that nuclear energy must be used, as energy autonomy is critical to national security.
A tabletop exercise held by the Taiwan Center for Security Studies this month showed that Taiwan’s energy security coefficient was a worryingly high 0.99, Wang said.
Although nuclear power is one of the cheapest sources of energy, President William Lai (賴清德) purchases green power from the Philippines, she said.
Adding up all costs from delivering and transmitting green power might be up to NT$8 (US$0.24) per kilowatt-hour (kWh), while the cost of nuclear energy would be less than NT$2 per kilowatt-hour, she said.
Climate Change Pioneering Alliance founder Yang Chia-fa (楊家法), who is also a Taipower technician, said that the company has a deficit of NT$2.66 trillion, not NT$500 billion as Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said on Monday last week.
The NT$560 billion budget for power grid resilience would mostly be invested in wind and solar, for which costs are estimated to rise by NT$25 billion for every 1 percent increase in wind or solar power coverage, Yang said.
LowCarbonPower Ltd Co founder Olof Nordenstam said that the Swedish government has shifted from a goal of “100 percent renewables” to “100 percent low-carbon energy” due to heightened awareness of climate change.
Taiwan’s greatest amount of power generated by low-carbon energy was 557kWh in 2013, but the figure dropped to 486kWh last year, Nordenstam said, citing data from LowCarbonPower.
However, the total amount of power generated by low-carbon energy or fossil fuels continued to increase over the past decade, meaning that the percentage of power generated by low-carbon energy must have declined, he said.
While Taiwan refrained from using nuclear energy, the US has kept nuclear power plants in operation on top of developing green power sources, leading to a growing percentage of power generated by low-carbon energy, he said.
Alliance spokesman Chiang Chao-yuan (江肇元) said that the government’s clean energy policy should be pragmatic and nuclear power should be considered a low-carbon, clean energy option in line with global trends.
Sufficient and stable power supply is indispensable to digital transition and high-tech sectors such as artificial intelligence, biomedicine, smart agriculture and electric vehicles, Chiang said.
Nuclear Myth Busters founder Huang Shih-hsiu (黃士修) said that Premier Cho Jung-tai’s (卓榮泰) remarks on Tuesday last week that a NT$100 billion subsidy for Taipower was to reimburse it for low electricity prices.
The subsidy was to make up for spending on green power procurement, which was NT$119.3 billion, he said.
The Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s Gongliao District (貢寮) could have been commercialized and contributed at least 20 terrawatt-hours of electricity annually had it not been mothballed in 2014, he added.
