Su Tseng-chang, chairman of the Democratic Progressive Party, wants a referendum on Taiwan's Fourth Nuclear Power Plant at Gongliao in New Taipei City, popularly known as Nuke 4. The opposition party began collecting signatures last year for initiating the referendum to decide the future of the Longmen Nuclear Power Plant, the official name given to Nuke 4 by its operator, Taiwan Power Company.
He held a press conference at the New Taipei City Council last week to announce he is planning to call the referendum alongside what is known as the seven-in-one elections toward the end of next year. He came under fire from within his own party, the ruling Kuomintang, and anti-nuclear organizations.
All opponents panned Su for a political maneuver to win the nationwide seven local elections on one day. As the terms of all seven classes of local public office holders expire on Dec. 25 next year, the Central Election Commission has decided to hold elections of mayors and councilors of special municipalities, mayors and councilors of cities and counties, township and village chiefs and councilors, and ward chiefs all on one day in November or December 2014.
Su wishes to increase the turnout of supporters by inducing them to vote on the referendum, a tactic President Chen Shui-bian used to help win his 2004 re-election by calling two referendums on Election Day. Confronted with the opposition, Su is rethinking the timing of his plebiscite to determine the future of Nuke 4. Should he accept the demand of the Nuclear-free Homeland Alliance and other anti-nuclear organizations as well as his party heavyweights, he would have to initiate the referendum as soon as he could gather enough signatures for its endorsement.
It takes time to collect all the necessary signatures and get the initiative approved. Su has to race against the time, for Nuke 4 is now scheduled to make a test run at the end of this year, and if it passes the safety assessment of the World Association of Nuclear Power Operators and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, it will start commercial operation. It is all but certain that the referendum, if held at all, will be too late to decommission the commissioned Nuke 4.
Construction on Nuke 4 started at Gongliao in 1997. It was delayed by President Chen, who is now doing time for corruption and graft. Chen had the construction suspended in October 2000 because he wanted to scrap Nuke 4, a pet project of the previous Kuomintang administration. Construction resumed eight months later, delaying the commercial operation originally set for 2007 by three years with a loss of NT$400 billion (US$12 billion) in penalties, cost overruns and extra outlays.
Then, Taipower delayed the operation until 2011 and asked for NT$40 billion (US$1.2 billion) more to get the first of its two generating units started, the reason being that its control and information system could not be installed as scheduled. The target date was deferred until 2012. After Japan's nuclear disaster, caused by the great earthquake of 2011 and the subsequent tsunami, the operation is being delayed again, although construction is almost complete. Taipower is now ready to operate Nuke 4 next year.
Is it necessary to call a referendum to scrap Nuke 4? Has it ever occurred to all those people clamoring for the demise of Nuke 4 that Taiwan might have raised a US$13.2 billion mammoth white elephant just to be slaughtered, if the referendum were passed? Have they thought of how much more all the people would have to pay in higher power rates? How much costs for the manufacturing industry would rise? How Taiwan's national competitiveness would be affected? There are hundreds of other questions that should be asked. Unless all these questions have been successfully wrestled with, it's better not to hold the referendum on Nuke 4.
As a matter of fact, a referendum on going nuclear-free is a little far-fetched. Italy is one country where a referendum was passed to ban nuclear power. Italians passed the referendum because they knew they could buy power from their Western European neighbors, which, however, may be nuclear-generated. Taiwan is an island and we can't buy any electric power from our neighbors. As a result, the only thing we can do to make up for the loss of nuclear power due to the scrapping of Nuke 4 is to build more thermal power plants and feed them with increasingly costly natural gases and oil.
That's why Japan isn't planning a referendum to ban nuclear power, though many people are still suffering from the Fukushima nuclear reactor meltdown of 2011. Neither did the United States, which suffered the Three Mile Island meltdown in 1979, try to call a referendum on nuclear power. Nor have the Russians attempted to go to the polls to vote against nuclear power after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster of 1986.
Moreover, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is planning to let Japan's nuclear power plants resume operation to help the economy grow in accordance with his Abenomics. Of course, nobody knows whether Abenomics will work or not, but he simply has to end the embargo on nuclear power supply just to make up for expected power shortages.
One word of advice to Mr. Su. Don't be obsessed by elections. Instead of calling for the referendum on the future of Nuke 4, offer a solution to the problem of Taiwan's dependence on nuclear power to get your party back to power in 2016. The Kuomintang administration hasn't come up with a feasible plan to solve that problem and is highly unlikely to offer one anytime soon; the opposition party has a better chance to sell its yet-to-be-made plan to win the presidential election a little more than three years from now.
〈本文僅供參考，不代表本會立場〉
（本文刊載於102.01.28 The China Post）