Taiwan Church News 3833 Edition August 11 ~ 17, 2025 Weekly Topical Civic Groups Call Taiwan Society to Say No in Referendum on Re-Starting the Dangerous and Outdated Nuclear Power Plant No. 3 Reported by Lin Yi-ying from Taipei On August 23, a national referendum on the question, ”if you agree to re-start Nuclear Plant No. 3”,will be held across Taiwan. Eight civil organizations, including Taiwan Environmental Protection Union(TEPU), PCT, Taiwan Society North and etc, held a joint press conference on August 8. To Taiwan society, called the civic groups in press conference with an urgent message, “a re-start of Nuclear Plant No. 3 is unsafe, as Taiwan’s safety should not be taken as a bet, and the restart of Nuclear Plant No. 3is absolutely not helpful to Taiwan’s energy security or electricity resilience.” Based on many unworthy reasons for the a retired nuclear plant to re-start, such as it is wasting time and money to go through the nuclear security assessment again, it would be time-consuming on nuclear equipment update, these civic groups call the public to cast a firm no-vote in the impending referendum. After the shutdown of the Unit 2 reactor in Nuclear Plant No. 3 on May 17, Taiwan formally entered into an era of “nuclear-free homeland”. “Even though in recent months there are indeed peaks of summer electricity consumption, but is there any power shortage in Taiwan because of this nuclear-free energy policy? In fact, the average capacity rate of standby powers is more than 10% in recent months, and there is no power shortage at all,” indicated by Dr Shih Shin-min, founding president of TEPU. He called the public not to be fooled by the fabricated lies that electricity will be in big shortage if no nuclear power exists in Taiwan. Prof Shieh Je-cheng, current president of TEPU, quoted the insightful judgement of Prof Chen Wen-shan, an emeritus geology professor of National Taiwan University, who remarked “it is very lucky for Taiwan that there is no big earthquake in the past 40 years to break down the security of nuclear plant No. 3 .” Prof Shieh warned the audience, “if the Nuclear Plant No. 3 is allowed to restart, there will be another risky gamble on Taiwan’s security. Do we really want to stake on the nuclear power like a reckless gambler to show hands?” Rev Ng Tiet-gan, secretary of the PCT Church and Society Committee, said: “Taiwan is a small mountainous country and cannot sustain a nuclear disaster like Fukushima in Japan. Before the Fukushima nuclear disaster occasioned in March 2011, there were originally 7,000 people living in Futaba Town – a nuclear contaminated area later. By 2023, only about 60 people returned back to Futaba, and 56% of the residential population expressed their refusal to return home.” In 1992, Rev Ng expressed, PCT issued itsAnti-Nuclear Declaration, which clearly pointed out “nuclear energy is absolutely not a safe energy option for Taiwan if nuclear waste cannot be properly disposed.”Therefore, he suggested, safe alternative energy options should be developed, people’s life-style to consume energy should be changed, and electricity conservation should be advocated. “Instead of a ruthless joint-decision by Kuomintang (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) to restart the dangerous and outdated nuclear plant by a referendum, the stance of PCT is to call on Taiwanese people to vote against it,” remarked Rev Ng. Prof Cheng Mu-chun, a representative of Taiwan Society North and an elder of Sheng-Wang Church of Taipei presbytery, said “the referendum to re-start nuclear power plant is absolutely an absurd event with pathetic manipulation of populism and blunt bullying to Taiwan society. The shut down of Unit 2 reactor in Nuclear Plant No. 3 on May 17 is actually a decision after careful scientific review and extra-high-standard safety assessment, which should not result into any referendum like this we have.” Taking America’s MLB baseball as an example, Prof Cheng said, “the weirdness of the referendum is just like a player who decided to retire due to his own physical conditions or his team’s assessment, but a eerie referendum is launched by other teams asking the player to stay on the fields as the player is a box office guarantee or a baseball superstar. “ Just as there is a time set for MLB players to retire, Prof Cheng indicated, “nuclear power plants also have a day of retirement!” Prof Cheng said frankly “the brute logic behind KMT and TTP’s hard push to restart nuclear power plant is based on an arrogance of cybernetic influence and congressional majority, just like China often threatens that the future of Taiwan should be decided by China’s 1.4 billion people.” “Should the life and death of residents at Hengchun Township in Pingtung, where No. 3 nuclear plant is located, be decided by an absurd referendum of 23 million people who absolutely cannot accept the nuclear waste to pile up in the neighborhood their households?”, questioned Prof Cheng. Finally, Prof Cheng pointed out that KMT and TPP had never been able to answer the critical question: where is nuclear waste supposed to bury on Taiwan island?“Most college students know to carry a plan B in case their activities came across a rainy day. But KMT and TTP campaign a national-wide event, which cost Taiwan government NT$ 1.1 billion to hold the referendum, yet without any plan B to deal with nuclear waste! Isn’t it ridiculous?” The referendum was basically a political cheat and the public shall vote against it on August 23 to end the preposterous farce, said Prof Cheng. Translated by Peter Wolfe |