Taipei, Taiwan – As Taiwan prepares to close down its final nuclear reactor, hovering power demand pushed by the island’s semiconductor trade is rekindling a heated debate about nuclear energy.
Taiwan’s electrical energy wants are anticipated to rise by 12-13 % by 2030, largely pushed by the growth in synthetic intelligence (AI), in response to the Ministry of Financial Affairs.
Environmental group Greenpeace has estimated that the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Firm (TSMC), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, will by itself eat as a lot electrical energy as roughly one-quarter of the island’s some 23 million individuals by the identical date.
The self-ruled island’s hovering urge for food for energy complicates Taipei’s pledge to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, which is closely depending on elevating renewable power manufacturing to about 60-70 % of the whole from about 12 % at current.
Nuclear energy advocates argue that the power supply is probably the most possible approach for Taiwan to achieve its competing industrial and environmental objectives.
On Tuesday, Taiwan’s legislature handed an modification to permit nuclear energy vegetation to use for licences to increase operations past the prevailing 40-year restrict.
The opposition Kuomintang and Taiwan Folks’s Social gathering handed the invoice over the objections of the ruling Democratic Progressive Social gathering, which got here to energy in 2016 on a pledge to attain a “nuclear-free homeland”.
The authorized change won’t halt Sunday’s deliberate closure of the final working reactor – the No 2 reactor on the Maanshan Nuclear Energy Plant – although it casts doubt over the island’s longstanding opposition to nuclear energy.
Taiwanese Premier Cho Jung-tai speaks to the media upon his arrival on the parliament forward of his first coverage deal with in Taipei on February 25, 2025 (Yu Chien Huang/AFP)
The federal government stated after the vote that it had no fast plans for any future nuclear energy initiatives, although Premier Cho Jung-tai indicated earlier that the federal government wouldn’t oppose the restoration of decommissioned reactors if the modification handed.
Cho stated Taipei was “open” to nuclear energy offered security was ensured and the general public reached a consensus on the problem.
Any transfer to restart the native nuclear trade would, at a minimal, take years.
Taiwan started its civilian nuclear programme within the Nineteen Fifties with the help of expertise from the USA.
By 1990, state-owned energy agency Taipower operated three vegetation with the capability to generate greater than one-third of the island’s electrical energy wants.
‘Renewable power isn’t steady’
Angelica Oung, a member of the Clear Power Transition Alliance who helps nuclear energy, stated Taiwan might generate about 10 % of its power necessities from nuclear vegetation when the DDP got here to energy practically a decade in the past.
“Power emissions on the time had been decrease than now – isn’t that ridiculous?” Oung advised Al Jazeera.
“On the time, it was affordable to launch the anti-nuclear coverage as the general public was nonetheless recovering from the devastating Fukushima nuclear catastrophe … however now even Japan has now determined to return to nuclear,” Oung stated, referring to Tokyo’s plans to generate 20 % of its energy from the power supply by 2040.
“That’s as a result of renewables merely don’t work.”
“The availability of renewable power isn’t steady … photo voltaic power, for instance, wants the usage of batteries,” Oung added.
Whereas the 2011 Fukushima catastrophe helped solidify opposition to nuclear energy, Taiwan’s historical past of anti-nuclear activism stretches again many years earlier.
The DPP was based simply months after the 1986 Chornobyl catastrophe and included an anti-nuclear clause in its constitution.
Protesters show in opposition to proposals to restart building of the Longmen Nuclear Energy Plant in Taipei, Taiwan, on December 4, 2021 (Lam Yik Fei/Getty Photographs)
The next yr, the Indigenous Tao individuals launched protests in opposition to Taipower’s coverage of dumping nuclear waste on Orchid Island, serving to cement the civil anti-nuclear motion.
Nuclear power attracted additional adverse scrutiny within the Nineties, when it emerged that about 10,000 individuals had been uncovered to low ranges of radiation attributable to the usage of radioactive scrap metals in constructing supplies.
In 2000, Taipei halted building of a deliberate fourth nuclear plant amid protests by environmental teams.
A 2021 referendum proposal to restart work on the mothballed challenge was defeated 52.84 % to 47.16 %.
Chia-wei Chao, analysis director of the Taiwan Local weather Motion Community, stated nuclear energy isn’t the reply to Taiwan’s power wants.
“Creating nuclear power in Taiwan typically means chopping the funds for reinforcing renewables, versus different international locations,” Chao advised Al Jazeera.
Chao stated Taiwan’s nuclear vegetation had been constructed with out considering the danger of earthquakes and tsunamis, and that establishing an area trade that meets fashionable requirements could be expensive and troublesome.
“Extension of the present vegetation and reactors means having to improve the infrastructure to satisfy extra up to date security requirements and factoring in quake dangers. This prices rather a lot, so nuclear power doesn’t translate into cheaper electrical energy,” he stated.
The storage tanks for contaminated water on the Tokyo Electrical Energy Firm’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear energy plant, in Okuma, Japan, on January 20, 2023 (Philip Fong/AFP)
Lena Chang, a local weather and power campaigner at Greenpeace East Asia, stated that reviving nuclear power wouldn’t solely be expensive, however doubtlessly harmful, too.
“We, Greenpeace, firmly (oppose) restarting nuclear vegetation or increasing the usage of nuclear as a result of nuclear poses an unresolved security, waste and environmental danger, significantly in Taiwan – a small island that may’t afford a nuclear and environmental catastrophe,” Chang advised Al Jazeera.
Chang stated the chip trade ought to must contribute to the price of switching to renewable power sources.
“They need to be chargeable for assembly their very own inexperienced power demand, as an alternative of leaving all of the work to Taipower, as any of the cash to construct extra power vegetation and storage amenities in the end comes from individuals’s tax cash,” she stated.
Chao agreed, saying chip giants resembling TSMC ought to lead the push to go inexperienced.
“The chipmaking trade is right here to remain … Positive, power provide shall be tight within the subsequent three years, however it’s nonetheless sufficient,” he stated.
