nuclear-news

Liu Li-erh calls for a nuclear free Taiwan

we have about 8,000 spent fuel rods stored in the cooling pool at the Guosheng Nuclear Power Plant [in Wanli District (萬里), New Taipei City] and a total of about 16,000 throughout the country

in February France’s Le Monde newspaper warned about the risk from poor management of spent fuel rods at the Guosheng plant.

Many Japanese companies and government offices have saved up to 50 percent on their electricity consumption since the disaster, “so Taiwan can surely do the same to end our reliance on nuclear power

Now is time to go nuclear-free: author, Taipei Times By Lee I-chia  24 June 12, Tokyo-based Taiwanese writer Liu Li-erh (劉黎兒) yesterday in Taipei shared her latest fact-finding from Japan to say that now is the best time to put a halt to nuclear power in Taiwan…

…. Liu said
that more than 1 million Japanese continue to live in areas with high
daily radiation exposure and the total cost of damage from the nuclear
disaster is still too high to estimate.
“If nuclear power is not abolished, then our assets — especially those
fixed assets in Taipei City and New Taipei City (新北市) — would be
‘abolished’ if a nuclear disaster occurs,” Liu told participants at a
two-day forum on transforming Taiwan into a sustainable low-carbon
environment.
Liu said that although her house is located about 80km away from the
Fukushima Dai-ichi plant, the property has lost almost all of its
value due to the high levels of radiation present since the disaster.
She said that the Japanese government had set provisional regulations
for radiation-contaminated food at 500 Bq/kg for radioactive cesium
levels immediately after the disaster, and reduced the limit to 100
Bq/kg in April. However, this is still 1,000 times the limit for rice
(0.1 Bq/kg) in force prior to the disaster.
The Fukushima Dai-ichi catastrophe proved that sometimes even the
government is unable to cope with the enormous damage from a nuclear
meltdown, she said.
Many Japanese have learned from the disaster that “the knowledge of
nuclear specialists is limited, they are not experts on evaluating the
harm and impact that nuclear disasters can cause humans or society,”
she said, adding: “So it becomes important to make judgements on our
own, instead of always believing the government.”
Many experts from Japan and other countries are now very concerned
about the more than 1,500 fuel rods housed in the storage pool inside
the damaged No. 4 reactor building at Fukushima Dai-ichi, warning that
a disaster worse than the three reactor meltdowns could happen if the
pool collapses, she added.
“If the storage pool breaks and runs dry, the nuclear fuel inside will
overheat and explode, causing a massive radiation release over a wide
area,” she said.
Japan’s Mainichi Shimbun on April 2 said that “if this were to happen,
residents in the Tokyo metropolitan area would be forced to evacuate.”
“Maybe some international experts have not noticed that we have about
8,000 spent fuel rods stored in the cooling pool at the Guosheng
Nuclear Power Plant [in Wanli District (萬里), New Taipei City] and a
total of about 16,000 throughout the country,” she said.
Taiwan has good reason to abandon all nuclear power operations because
many international experts have already warned that the two nuclear
power plants in northern Taiwan pose an immediate threat to greater
Taipei, she said, adding that in February France’s Le Monde newspaper
warned about the risk from poor management of spent fuel rods at the
Guosheng plant.
Taiwan has a high reserve electricity capacity, so there would be no
power shortage even if the nuclear power plants were immediately
closed down, Liu said.
Many Japanese companies and government offices have saved up to 50 percent on their electricity consumption since the disaster, “so Taiwan can surely do the same to end our reliance on nuclear power,”
she added. http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2012/06/25/2003536214

June 25, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Taiwan, wastes