Taiwan halts nuke plant construction
Print Edition
TAIWAN is to halt construction at a controversial nuclear power plant after tens of thousands of protesters blockaded a main street in Taipei calling for the project to be scrapped.
Protesters broke through a police cordon to take control of a busy eight-lane intersection yesterday, demanding an end to construction of the “Nuke Four” power station outside Taipei.
Later, the ruling Kuomintang party yielded to pressure from the anti-nuclear demonstrators and promised to stop work at the plant.
“There will be no further construction of reactor one,” Kuomintang spokesman Fan Chiang Tai-chi told reporters.
“Only safety checks will be done and after that it will be sealed for storage. Construction of reactor two will be terminated,” he said. “In the future, any of its commercial operations will be decided by a referendum.”
Chanting crowds gathered in a main square in Taipei yesterday morning where some protesters had been staging an overnight sit-in.
Shouting “Stop construction of a fourth nuclear power plant!,” demonstrators marched to nearby Chung-shiao West Road — an eight-lane artery where the main railway station is located — and swarmed through police lines to occupy the street, bringing traffic to a halt.
Around half an hour later, the outnumbered riot police, who had offered no resistance, retreated from the middle of the road. Buses and other vehicles were forced to detour around the intersection and traffic ground to a halt.
Police put the number of protesters at around 28,500.
The demonstrators had pledged to continue their sit-in until today, when the government was due to meet to discuss the power plant.
The power station has been one of the most contentious projects in Taiwan. Intense political wrangling has repeatedly delayed its construction, which began in 1999 and has already cost around NT$300 billion (US$9.8 billion).
Concerns about Taiwan’s nuclear power stations have been mounting since 2011, when Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant was hit by a tsunami which knocked out power to its cooling systems and sent reactors into meltdown.
Like Japan, Taiwan is regularly hit by earthquakes. In September 1999 a 7.6-magnitude quake killed around 2,400 people in the island’s deadliest natural disaster in recent history.
Anti-nuclear campaigner Lin Yi-hsiung, 72, brought the issue into the spotlight last Tuesday when he began an indefinite hunger strike in protest at the new plant.
He said that public opinion was ignored by the government.
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