Taiwan regulator approves Maanshan nuclear plant restart plan — Taipei Times
Taiwan’s Nuclear Safety Commission on September 24 approved an initial plan to restore operations at the Maanshan Nuclear Power Plant in Pingtung County. The plan was submitted by Taiwan Power Co in March, reviewed in three rounds and received 589 comments, Taipei Times reports.
Taiwan Power Co must now carry out the work stipulated in the plan and conduct its own inspections of the condition of the equipment and the plant’s radiation and seismic resilience. The company must then submit the results to the commission, which will conduct further reviews and on-site inspections. Minister of Economic Affairs Kung Ming-hsin named 2028 as the earliest possible date for the restart, while the Nuclear Safety Commission has not set a specific date.
Dispute over environmental assessment
Taiwan’s Ministry of Environment believes that an environmental assessment is not required to extend operations or restart a nuclear power plant. The ministry notes that current rules require such a procedure when building a nuclear plant, adding generating units or decommissioning it, but do not mention license renewal.
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Environmental organizations dispute this interpretation. Lin Chien-yen, a researcher at the Green Citizens’ Action Alliance, stated that the Environmental Impact Assessment Act applies to the development of nuclear and other types of energy. In his view, after a license expires, an operator must obtain a new license valid for up to 20 years, meaning the procedure must be assessed under the law in force on the date the application is submitted.
Possible court challenge
Kao Ming-chih, a professor at the Institute of Law for Science and Technology at National Tsing Hua University, believes that the review for license renewal already includes an assessment of environmental consequences, but takes place outside the procedure defined by the environmental assessment law. In his opinion, a court may not recognize such a review as a substitute for the formal environmental procedure.
The Green Citizens’ Action Alliance, Citizen of the Earth Taiwan and 32 other organizations stressed on September 29 that approval of the initial plan is not permission to restart the plant. They called for geologists, seismologists and emergency medicine specialists to be involved in the safety assessment. According to the alliance’s estimate, Taiwan Power Co may need from two to five years of work before the commission’s next review.
