beyondbrics

The wisdom of building nuclear plants on an earthquake-prone island has always been a contentious issue in Taiwan and the Fukushima nuclear crisis has already reignited a heated debate on whether the government should go ahead with a fourth plant.

Up to now, those fighting against nuclear power have largely been limited to environmentalists and opposition politicians. On Wednesday, however, they received support from an unexpected quarter: Chang Yung-fa, chairman and founder of the Evergreen Group and one of Taiwan’s richest and most-respected businessmen.

The 84-year-old Chang, who now rarely appears in public, is the first prominent businessmen in Taiwan to throw his weight behind the anti-nuclear lobby.

“Taiwan is in an earthquake zone, so the government should take extra care when building infrastructure, particularly with nuclear plants,” Chang said. “It’s not unreasonable that some of the public are opposed to building new nuclear plants”.

Instead of relying on nuclear energy, Chang said, Taiwan should greatly step up its use of other clean energy sources such as building hydro or natural gas power plants and adding wind farms to its off-shore islands.

He said Evergreen – whose main businesses are shipping and airlines but which also runs a gamut of other businesses including security and hotels – once invested in and built a natural gas power plant in northern Taiwan, as part of a government drive in the 1990s for public-private-partnership investments in infrastructure.

“If I, Chang Yung-fa, could build a [clean-energy] electricity plant, why can’t the Taiwan government do more [to use alternate energy sources]?” he asked.

But others point out that for Taiwan, as with many other countries, it would be next to impossible to become completely nuclear-free. Chen Chao-yi, an official at Taiwan’s ministry of economic affairs, told legislators this week that if Taiwan’s three existing nuclear plants were shut down, there would be such a shortage of electricity that between a quarter to a third of Taiwan’s industries would face blackouts.

President Ma Ying-jeou, seeking to reassure the populace about nuclear safety in Taiwan, on Wednesday said that besides conducting full safety reviews of Taiwan’s nuclear plants, his government would also seek to work with China to ensure the safety of nuclear plants across the Taiwan Strait in mainland China.

If a nuclear crisis happens in China, Ma said, “Taiwan may be affected, but by then it would not just be a cross-Strait, issue, but a regional issue.”

Further Reading:
Taiwan file, beyondbrics
Nuclear power file, beyondbrics