Nuclear Power and Policy

Politics Taiwan Politics
1

Just starting a new thread so discussion doesn’t get absurdly off-topic in the other thread:

[quote=“hansioux”][quote=“Taiwanguy”][quote=“hansioux”][quote=“Taiwanguy”]
I do not at all like the idea of referendums being used to do things as specific as shutting down a particular power plant. There is a reason most of the world’s mature democracies (including Taiwan) utilize a representative system instead of a direct system. If referendums are deemed necessary in a representative democracy, they should be on issues pertaining to the system and structure of government itself…not on specific points of policy and legislation. That’s my opinion anyway.[/quote]

I doubt most Taiwanese people would give a rats ass had Nuclear Power Planet 4 not been a complete and utter mess from design to construction. Yet those in power would continue to push forward construction despite numerous calls from experts to halt construction all together. This is exactly where the referendum system should be put to use.[/quote]

Disagree. And the majority got what they wanted in this case anyway. The plant is completed, has passed rigorous examinations from international agencies, and is pretty much ready to go…but has been sealed up until a referendum. You say “numerous calls from experts to halt construction,” but most of those calls have been from relatively anti-nuclear organizations…The experts that are in charge of ensuring that nuclear power plants are safe and ready to go into operation have given Lungmen the green light. Anyway…this isn’t the thread for this discussion. Suffice it to say that I don’t agree with referendums being used to decide energy policy and such. Want that done…then vote for representatives that agree with you.[/quote]

  1. Generator 1 was only 90% complete, how would international agencies rate an incomplete generator as ready to go? From what I can gather, the nuclear agency make enquiries to DRS and PLuS32 to evaluate whether the systems are still ok after 10 years. Post Fukushima, they got ENSREG, OECD and NEA to do stress tests. Finally, they got a group of 12 GE people to make evaluations back in 2013, not items all were passed. There are some issues with that assessment because GE was after all very involved in the project and these GE people probably shouldn’t be counted as “international agencies”.
    momlovestaiwan.tw/content/nuclea … aspx?id=25

  2. After the GE review, there are at least 10 outstanding issues that weren’t included in the review because these were problems that should have been addressed much earlier on

  3. Dr. Lin Zhongyao (林宗堯) who is strongly opposed to the nuclear plant going into operation was GE’s contractor supervisor on site during construction. He has serious considerations about the integrity of basic infrastructures, because he saw many problems and had a hard time to have any of them addressed.

  4. Regarding the systems, Dr. Lin said in 2010, the control room experienced a fire, and the CVCF system (and it’s redundant backup) that was supposed to keep the plant powered malfunctioned. 3/4 of the system’s capacitors, 70 control processors were burnt, the current spike dampeners also failed, causing the display panels in the main control room to fail. Had such an event happened while the generator was in operation, it would mean engineers would lose control over the generators temperature, pressure, cooling, and water level. Dr. Lin believes since many of the systems are mashup efforts, the problems are deep rooted in the designs being overly complex and uncoordinated.

article.denniswave.com/8454

  1. it’s built at a place where Taiwan is most susceptible to tsunamis

    on average of every 150 years, there’s would be a massive tsunami taking place in the area from Ryukyu to Northern Taiwan. The highest recorded wave was 80 meters high (1771), the highest recorded wave, 8 m, in Northern Taiwan was 1867’s Keelung (Jilong) tsunami.

  2. it’s built on a fault

  3. there are underwater volcanoes around the site

  4. Ma only postponed construction so that the referendum wouldn’t happen during the election last week. Also hopefully the Nuclear 4 power plant issue would be handled by the next president. Too bad without nuclear power plant 4 referendum on the ballot, KMT still lost many of the elections.[/quote]

  5. There are two reactors at the Lungmen Plant. It is my understanding that reactor No. 1 has been completely greenlighted and sealed. It was originally supposed to go into operation near the end of this year or early 2015. No. 2 is approximately 90% completed, and construction has been halted.

taiwantoday.tw/ct.asp?xItem= … ctNode=421

  1. Every nuclear reactor fails items on early inspection runs. Those inspections have the purpose of identifying things that need to be addressed before greenlighting the reactor before operation. Reactor No. 1 now passes all of those items.

  2. One anti-nuclear guy’s opinion.

  3. That was 2010. The reactor was still 4 years out from being deemed fit for operational. It now is ready and passes all international standards.

The following statement concerns Taiwan nuclear safety in general:

[quote]In January 2012 the AEC said that its post-Fukushima inspections found “no safety concerns” with the six operating nuclear units. It also required Taipower itself to review the nuclear plants’ safety margins by following the European Union’s reactor stress test requirements.
A review conducted by the European Commission and the European Nuclear Safety Regulators’ Group (ENSREG) in 2013 confirmed that the safety standards used by Taiwan’s nuclear power plants are generally high and comply with international state-of-the-art practices. [/quote]
The same company and oversight committee that runs those plants will be running the Lungmen plant. There is no reason to assume safety standards would be lower there than at the older plants, and in fact, the reactor design used at Lungmen is a much safer design than the other plants.

5.-7. If true, it’s pretty much true about any location around Taiwan. Standards have been beefed up for this reactor because of its location…in Taiwan. I just don’t share the extreme fear of nuclear incidents. The way I look at it is that Fukushima was a near perfect storm…everything that could have gone wrong, did. Record-breaking earthquake, record-breaking tsunami, old, outdated reactor with outdated backup systems, etc. And still…not a SINGLE radiation-related death and scientist don’t think there will be a statistically observable rise in cancers either.

  1. So?
2

There are 435 nuclear plants in the world (and more coming) and would have been 436 with Fukushima. 0.23% of nuclear plants at that very time nearly went nuclear in the world at the time of Fukushima and it didn’t happen. The last time it did happen was Chernobyl. Nothing is 100% safe but nuclear power seems to be fairly safe and there are far more safeguards in place than there ever was before. Nuclear power isn’t perfect. But neither is burning oil and coal and polluting the air that we know can lead to an increase in cancer rates.

3

[quote=“Taiwanguy”]The following statement concerns Taiwan nuclear safety in general:

In January 2012 the AEC said that its post-Fukushima inspections found “no safety concerns” with the six operating nuclear units. It also required Taipower itself to review the nuclear plants’ safety margins by following the European Union’s reactor stress test requirements.[/quote]

You do understand that the AEC is a Taiwan government body, whose peers have been assuring us of food safety for decades.

That is contradicted by this:

[quote]The council’s Department of Nuclear Regulation director Chen Yi-pin (陳宜彬) said that due to the nation’s ambiguous international status, a request for the International Atomic Energy Agency to establish a peer review team to conduct a stress test last year was rejected by the agency.

However, both the NEA and the ENSREG had agreed to form an independent peer review team for the task, he said, adding that the test report finished in March was by the NEA team and the ENSREG review is scheduled to take place in September.
[/quote]

And that report was criticized not least because an AEC member was on it.

I agree that after Fukushima one has to reconsider just how dangerous a nuclear disaster is, however, that is also assuming one has plenty of land for people displaced for at least a few years while a cleanup begins and also that one trusts the government has a good safety record. Taiwan has neither. They can’t even, as I write above, manage basic food safety. Nor can they manage regular industrial waste. Do you really think they can handle spent fuel rods? If you can’t answer that question with a firm yes while looking at yoruself in the mirror then you know you don’t support nuclear power in Taiwan.

Which scientist? You are confusing the general population of Japan with specific groups within the exposure area:

From the WHO:

[quote] In terms of specific cancers, for people in the most contaminated location, the estimated increased risks over what would normally be expected are:

all solid cancers - around 4% in females exposed as infants;
breast cancer - around 6% in females exposed as infants;
leukaemia - around 7% in males exposed as infants;
thyroid cancer - up to 70% in females exposed as infants (the normally expected risk of thyroid cancer in females over lifetime is 0.75% and the additional lifetime risk assessed for females exposed as infants in the most affected location is 0.50%).

For people in the second most contaminated location of Fukushima Prefecture, the estimated risks are approximately one-half of those in the location with the highest doses.

The report also references a section to the special case of the emergency workers inside the Fukushima NPP. Around two-thirds of emergency workers are estimated to have cancer risks in line with the general population, while one-third is estimated to have an increased risk.[/quote]

There is also the fact that the mental stress of being exposed to radiation and having to return to an area that you are uncertain about its long term affects on your body is going to cause a great deal of health problems. But I guess they should just buck up, right?

As for Taiwan, say goodbye to tourism should we have a nuclear accident. But hey that won’t affect anyone will it?

No matter how you look at it, nuclear power on a small crowded island is not good policy. Which means that those who push it at the government level are by definition not to be trusted. If your judgment is this awful you can hardly turn around and say, but trust me that I will ensure safety standards are the highest they can be.

No, because if you were concerned about safety you wouldn’t built this is the first place.

4

This is the point. The much-touted safety of “modern” nuclear reactors still hinges on competent personnel. These things don’t build and run themselves. If an advanced country like Japan can’t get it right, it suggests most of the world can’t either. That means there’s a small but finite risk of disaster. As the OP pointed out, Taiwan can’t even store its spent fuel rods properly.

There are places where nuclear is a viable option. For highly competent, sparsely-populated societies with few other energy resources, it’s a good choice. Taiwan is not one of those places.

5

[quote=“Mucha Man”][quote=“Taiwanguy”]The following statement concerns Taiwan nuclear safety in general:

In January 2012 the AEC said that its post-Fukushima inspections found “no safety concerns” with the six operating nuclear units. It also required Taipower itself to review the nuclear plants’ safety margins by following the European Union’s reactor stress test requirements.[/quote]

You do understand that the AEC is a Taiwan government body, whose peers have been assuring us of food safety for decades. [/quote]

That’s why I included the following…

That is contradicted by this:

[quote]The council’s Department of Nuclear Regulation director Chen Yi-pin (陳宜彬) said that due to the nation’s ambiguous international status, a request for the International Atomic Energy Agency to establish a peer review team to conduct a stress test last year was rejected by the agency.

However, both the NEA and the ENSREG had agreed to form an independent peer review team for the task, he said, adding that the test report finished in March was by the NEA team and the ENSREG review is scheduled to take place in September.
[/quote][/quote]

Why do these things contradict? Source: world-nuclear.org/info/Count … in-Taiwan/

Yes, I believe they can handle spent fuel rods. They have been for decades with no significant incidents.

Which scientist? You are confusing the general population of Japan with specific groups within the exposure area:

From the WHO:

[quote] In terms of specific cancers, for people in the most contaminated location, the estimated increased risks over what would normally be expected are:

all solid cancers - around 4% in females exposed as infants;
breast cancer - around 6% in females exposed as infants;
leukaemia - around 7% in males exposed as infants;
thyroid cancer - up to 70% in females exposed as infants (the normally expected risk of thyroid cancer in females over lifetime is 0.75% and the additional lifetime risk assessed for females exposed as infants in the most affected location is 0.50%).

For people in the second most contaminated location of Fukushima Prefecture, the estimated risks are approximately one-half of those in the location with the highest doses.

The report also references a section to the special case of the emergency workers inside the Fukushima NPP. Around two-thirds of emergency workers are estimated to have cancer risks in line with the general population, while one-third is estimated to have an increased risk.[/quote][/quote]

Yes, those are estimated increases in risks of developing cancers expressed as a percentage of the baseline risk. They are also based on the theoretical assumption that infants in the most dangerous zone received up to 200 millisieverts of radiation. Actual tests done on infants in the danger area have shown no doses above 50 mSv. Even assuming the worst, those increases in risk would not result in an statistically observable increase in cancers. That doesn’t mean that no one will get cancer due to radiation exposure or that there isn’t a measurable increase in risk. It just means that whatever increase there is will appear as statistical noise.

This is a quote directly from the WHO report you referred to above. It appears on page 92 of the report. “The present results suggest that the increases in the incidence of human disease attributable to the additional radiation exposure from the Fukushima Daiichi NPP accident are likely to remain below detectable levels.” Link to full report: apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/1066 … 30_eng.pdf

[quote]
As for Taiwan, say goodbye to tourism should we have a nuclear accident. But hey that won’t affect anyone will it?

No matter how you look at it, nuclear power on a small crowded island is not good policy. Which means that those who push it at the government level are by definition not to be trusted. If your judgment is this awful you can hardly turn around and say, but trust me that I will ensure safety standards are the highest they can be.

No, because if you were concerned about safety you wouldn’t built this is the first place.[/quote]

Japan is also a crowded island…and after their big nuclear scare and subsequent abandoning of nuclear energy, they are realizing they still need it. Taiwan does, too. I personally think the risks associated with nuclear power are extremely low…even on the crowded little island of Taiwan. I am concerned about safety and believe that Taiwan has a good track record pertaining to nuclear safety. I literally trust them with my life on this.

Taiwan currently relies on coal and oil for a large majority of their energy needs. Well over a quarter of their coal is imported from China. Those facts are not going to change overnight. Alternative energy sources and a restructuring of energy policy in general is an admirable and necessary goal…but in the meantime, there is a readily available nuclear reactor or two that virtually just have to be switched on to take out a big chunk of the island’s reliance on fossil fuels. In just 4 years or so, Jinmen plants are going to have to be shut down. That hole will be filled with coal and oil and more reliance on China if they don’t decide to turn Lungmen on. The safety issues with coal and oil scare me MUCH more than the nearly negligible risks associated with nuclear power.

6

The waste dump on Orchid Island is a joke. Standard 差不多 attitude. Google it. Nobody wants it there and Taipower is still trying to offload it onto some hard-up foreign country.

Waste needs to be stored securely for centuries, not decades. Just because those barrels haven’t corroded yet doesn’t imply they never will.

They want it. They don’t need it. Two very different things.

You don’t seem to understand how “risk” works. If some novel process had a one-in-ten-billion chance of detonating the entire planet, would we use it on the basis that “the risk is very small”? I sincerely hope not.

It doesn’t matter if the risk of a huge accident is vanishingly small when the (potential) outcome of accident is cataclysmic. A small number times a very big number is still a large-ish number, not zero.

7

Nuclear power is an issue near and dear to my heart, but I have to go to work in a few minutes, so I’m just going to interject something brief. Later I’ll try to add more.

Specifically, I want to respond to these two points that were raised about the 4th nuclear power plant:

  1. it’s built on a fault
  1. there are underwater volcanoes around the site

Both points are bullshit. Well, not 100% bullshit, just 98% bullshit. Yes, there are faults practically everywhere in Taiwan, as demonstrated by the fact that we have frequent earthquakes. I was here for the big one in 1999…killed a lot of people, but did nothing to the three existing nuclear powerplants. In fact, it is dead easy to build a nuclear power plant to be earthquake-proof. I cannot find anything in the literature to indicate that a nuclear accident was ever caused by an earthquake. True, Fukushima was destroyed right AFTER an earthquake, but it was due to the tsunami. Of course, there are numerous “reports” by Facebook posters claiming that the reactor blew up like an atomic bomb due to the earthquake, and that millions have already died from cancer due to Fukushima radiation, and so on. Equally, Facebook has taught me a great deal about wormholes and aliens in the 8th dimension. But if you go to any reliable source, there is no evidence that a nuclear power plant was ever destroyed by an earthquake.

You’re worried about underwater volcanoes? Wow. Taiwan has no active volcanoes. Yangmingshan is the only volcano on Taiwan proper, and it is extinct. The three islands off the east coast (Guishan, Green Island and Lanyu) are remnants of volcanoes that also long ago went extinct. If you’re worried that a volcano is going to suddenly emerge from the sea floor and wipe out the nuclear power plant (along with nearby Keelung), then I would suggest tranquilizers (helps with paranoid delusions).

Tsunamis and earthquakes - I’ll have more to say about that later…

OK, gotta go. Really. Not trying to “be sassy and run,” but today is busy. However, if you’ve got some verbal abuse that you’d like to throw my way, please feel free. I’ll read it later.

cheers,
DB

8

It seems Taiwan is going to try to ship the fuel rods to France now:

[quote] Taipower has decided to transport the used fuel rods to France since the storage tanks of the First and Second Nuclear Power Plants have been over capacity for quite some time now. The New Taipei City Government has, however, not yet issued the necessary certification for the operation of the newly built dry storage fields.

To solve the storage problem, Taipower first suggested building dry storage fields. It ran into protests from environmental groups almost immediately.

Lin said that Taipower has been searching for possible solutions to deal with the storage problem. Even though nuclear power plants may be abolished in the future, nuclear waste is a problem that the company needs to face now. [/quote]

Which of course means that no, Taiwanguy, they have not been handling this well for decades but have been storing them at nuclear power plants desperately hoping for a real solution.

9

Dog’s Breakfast I am still waiting for the rolling brownouts people like you were telling us were going to begin in 2004. Still waiting…waiting…waiting…

Nope, Taipower and the nuclear lobby have no credibility gap that I can see. :whistle:

Anyway, I bet those Fulong biangdengs, made with the choicest of imported industrial oils, will be even better tasting with a little iodine if you know what I mean. :laughing:

10

Please refresh my memory about what/when/where I predicted that. Predictions I allegedly made 10+ years ago are not fresh on my mind right now, and a search on Forumosa just now didn’t turn up anything, but maybe my search string wasn’t right for what you’re talking about.

About tsunamis. I actually do agree that is a problem. I can claim with some boasting rights that I actually did start worrying about tsunamis inundating nukes long before Fukushima. That’s not because I possess the ability to see into the future, but rather because I was impressed (and horrified) by the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004 that killed over 200,000 people. I actually think that there needs to be a worldwide moratorium on building nukes below 30 meters elevation for just this reason. The 4th nuclear power plant is 12 meters in elevation, not high enough. So what to do? The 4th nuclear powerplant cannot be moved. The reactors could be relocated, and some of the infrastructure along with it, but the containment buildings cannot be jacked up into the back of a flatbed truck and driven uphill.

To me, the intelligent choice is either to: A) rebuild the reactors at a higher elevation, at great expense, but with the advantage of using the latest Generation-III-Plus technology which is quite good, or: B) Fortify the containment building with tsunami-proof doors, gravity fed cooling pools, etc. Actually, from what I understand, some of that has been done, post Fukushima, but I can’t find anything very detailed. I did find some stuff in Chinese showing that the diesel backup generators were moved uphill, with gravity-fed pools, to avoid just the problem that occurred in Fukushima. That solution would probably work if engineered correctly, but it’s a bit Mickey Mouse. The nuke critics do have a point in this case - certainly a tsunami is more likely than the sudden emergence of an underwater volcano.

11

Finley’s post on risk got me thinking about insurance for nuclear accidents. Just how well insured are nuclear power plants. Seems not very. In most countries they have a limited liability which means in the case of giant disasters it is the taxpayer who pays the bill. This also increases moral hazard in that companies are unlikely to engage in the best practices if they know someone else will foot the costs of an accident.

Check the Price-Anderson Act. Without it the nuclear industry could not have gotten off the ground as regular insurance companies could not provide enough to cover a potential disaster.

[quote]The potential magnitude of worst-case accidents has been the subject of several major studies…

To address these issues, Congress introduced the Price-Anderson Act in 1957. The Act required companies to obtain the maximum possible insurance cover against accidents, determined to be $60 million, and provided a further government commitment of $500 million to cover any claims in excess of the private insurance. Companies were relieved of any liability beyond the insured amount for any incident involving radiation or radioactive releases regardless of fault or cause.

The act was intended to be temporary, and to expire in August 1967 as it was assumed that once the companies had demonstrated a record of safe operation they would be able to obtain insurance in the private market. :laughing: :laughing: :laughing: :laughing: :laughing: :laughing:

By 1966 it had become apparent that the industry would still be unable to obtain adequate private insurance, so the act was extended until 1976. :ohreally:

In 1975 the act was extended for 12 years, up until 1987. :ponder:

In 1988 the act was extended for 15 years up to August 2002. :neutral:

In February 2002 the act was temporarily extended to December 2003. After some debate in 2003, the Act was extended to 2017. :liar: :liar: :liar: :liar: :liar: [/quote]

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%8 … emnity_Act

12

Please refresh my memory about what/when/where I predicted that. [/quote]

People like you does not mean YOU. I suppose it can but in this case I am refering to the pro-nuclear lobby who have a pretty bad record of false and misleading claims the equal to the underwater volcanoes (which yes I agree there is not the slightest evidence for).

13

I believe in the UK the government basically agrees to take the rap; IIRC commercial insurers won’t even touch them because of the (exceedingly small) risk of being bankrupted by a claim.

In other words, the taxpayer foots the bill in the case of a small accident, and the taxpayer turns to grey goo in the case of a large accident.

EDIT: Wikipedia:

And as with most things that are uneconomic, TPTB deal with the uncomfortable reality by banishing it to the land of dreams. This risk can obviously be estimated with a reasonable level of confidence otherwise such a statement would make no sense; the implication is that nuclear power stations are simply not insured for the worst-case scenario. Even if they were, financial compensation can’t make everything right again.

The US seems to have a better arrangement:

14

The US is a bit better but obviously there is no proper insurance. Which means that the risks are calculable but simply too massive to ever set rates for. I’d be curious what our pro nuclear friends have to say. If the risk were as slight as they say then insurance would find acceptable rates. They do this for health insurance and labor insurance. Even though there is a risk that an economic collapse could lead to near full unemplyment the do not set rates accordingly. So why for nuclear disasters. Because as you say a small risk of gigantic proportions is still an enormous risk.

15

Around 290,000,000,000 NT has been spent on Nuke 4, right?

It would be an epic waste to leave it incomplete and unused.

16

The DPP will start supporting is once they get back into power. Such is the way of 2 party rule.

17

[quote=“PeregrineFalcon”]Around 290,000,000,000 NT has been spent on Nuke 4, right?

It would be an epic waste to leave it incomplete and unused.[/quote]

Epic waste is what gubmints do best :notworthy:

One possibility would be to start up #4 and shut down one of the older ones (which, when you think of the general state of Taiwan in the 1970s, must surely be running on borrowed time). However, it all depends: exactly what state is #4 in? If the news is to be believed, the delays have been mostly due to engineering incompetence and corner-cutting, which doesn’t inspire confidence.

18

[quote]Around 290,000,000,000 NT has been spent on Nuke 4, right?

It would be an epic waste to leave it incomplete and unused.[/quote]

I assume this an ironic statement? If it’s not, you might check this out:

http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Sunk_cost_fallacy

Guy

19

We need MORE POWER.

And just imagine the PR deterrent to a Chinese invasion if they start a nuclear disaster.

20

:laughing: Give us our freedom our this beach (and Keelung, Taipei County and Ilan) gets it.