Pan-blue media personality Jaw Shaw-kung, one of the leading figures of the “Fighting Blues” within the KMT, recently took a strong stance against the Tsai administration’s energy transition policy. Jaw criticized the Tsai administration as overly reliant on LNG terminals and instead called for the extension of Reactor No. 2 and Reactor No. 3’s operational lifetimes, as well as the restart of the controversial Lungmen Reactor No. 4. Jaw’s comments are worth examining for how this sheds light upon the pan-Blue camp’s framing of Taiwan’s current energy issues...
In a strange incident, the Guosheng No. 2 Nuclear Power Plant in Wanli, New Taipei experienced an emergency shutdown yesterday morning at 6:33 AM. However, after an investigation, the cause for the shutdown was revealed today. Namely, a chair that was pushed out of the way to clear space for cleaners hit a switch, causing the reactor’s main steam isolation valve to close...
Taiwan experienced rolling power outages today after a malfunction at a Kaohsiung substation led to an abnormality in the power grid. This will no doubt become an object of political contestation going forward, with pro-nuclear advocates in particular likely to leverage on the incident to claim that it demonstrates Taiwan's need for nuclear energy...
A fake agreement between the Taiwanese and Japanese governments was circulated on social media last week, claiming that the Taiwanese government had agreed to take on wastewater from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. The incident led to a response from the Presidential Office and has led to warnings that Chinese disinformation efforts directed at Taiwan could be growing more sophisticated...
Environmental groups demonstrated in front of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs earlier this week to protest against a proposed plan by the Japanese government to dump 1.23 million tons of wastewater from the 2011 Fukushima disaster into the ocean...
A march against climate change took place today, as organized by the Taiwan Youth Climate Coalition, to commemorate the global climate strike that took place across the world on September 25th. The march was attended by several hundred, despite drizzling rain throughout the day...
In the past month, the Nantou city government has filed a lawsuit against the state-owned Taipower Corporation. This is on the grounds that air pollution from the coal-burning Taichung Power Plant is causing the high death rate from lung cancer in Nantou county. Interestingly, the Taichung city government has backed Nantou county’s lawsuit against the Taipower Corporation...
With nuclear energy once again looming as an issue over elections next year, ten thousand demonstrated against nuclear energy in Taipei today. The demonstration saw visits by current president Tsai Ing-wen and former premier William Lai, who are both contending for the DPP's presidential nomination in 2020 elections...
