One Step Closer Towards Eliminating Nuclear Power：Can Taiwan Survive Four Major Challenges？
The Storm Media Editorial, March 17, 2023
This week, unit 2 of the Kuosheng Nuclear Power Plant (Second Nuclear Power Plant) was officially shut down and decommissioned. The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and President Tsai Ing-wen have taken another big step forward in abolishing nuclear power, but whether this step will bring Taiwan further into disaster is still unknown. Taiwan's power supply will face at least four major challenges, and any difficulty that cannot be overcome may bring disaster.
In 2016, Tsai and the Democratic Progressive Party came into office with an "energy policy" centered on removing nuclear energy. At the time, many experts and scholars were worried and questioned this energy policy. According to their plan, Taiwan will phase out of nuclear power by 2025, and replace it with green energy that will account for 20 percent of power supply; natural gas power generation will be increased to supply 50 percent of electricity, and power generated by coal will drop to 30 percent. This was the basic blueprint for Tsai’s energy policy.
After seven years of promoting the nuclear energy abolition policy, the mistakes and consequences of this plan is now apparent. Under the changes in the overall environment, its fallacy, and the risks it brings to Taiwan are even more obvious. Taiwan's power supply now faces four major challenges: an insufficient power supply, the worsening of air pollution, the impact of increased emissions, and high electricity prices.
Before the removal of nuclear power, the capacity of the first, second, and third nuclear power plants was 5 million kilowatts. Because nuclear power can provide stable long-term power supply, its capacity factor is much higher than that of green energy, which is more unstable and sporadic. Therefore, throughout the year, nuclear power alone can supply about 10 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity, and the second and third nuclear power plants can each generate 15 billion kilowatt-hours. This amount of nuclear energy accounts for 20 percent of overall power generation.
Many people who oppose the energy policy of the Tsai administration regard power shortage as the number one and most serious problem. In the past few years, massive power outages in Taiwan frightened the public and businesses. In the summer, the backup capacity ratio dropped to as low as 1 to 2 percent. The Taiwan Power Company (Taipower) had to call businesses and ask for them to use less electricity. The risk of a power shortage has been a looming concern.
But in fact, as long as they dare to spend money, and utilize thermal power to the maximum limit, the Tsai administration can, in fact, temporarily mask the issue of power shortage. The Tsai administration is indeed doing just that. A lot of thermal power units have been built or planned to be built in the past few years. For example, the so-called six major power supply plans will increase the installed capacity of thermal power generation units to as high as 18.23 million kilowatts, a significant increase.
The Taichung thermal power plant with an installed capacity of 5.78 million kilowatts was once known as the world's largest coal power plant for a long time. The pollution emissions are major. However, the Tsai administration is continuing to build thermal power plants in order to cancel the nuclear power plants. The pollution and emissions of natural gas power plants are lower than those of coal power plants, but in terms of total volume, they will continue to increase.
Therefore, this has brought about two serious consequences, and it is also a difficulty that Taiwan must overcome in the future: The first problem is worsening of air pollution. In areas where the power plants are located, many in central and southern Taiwan, in certain seasons and climates, "gray" skies will be the norm. This is not something that may happen in the future, but something that is happening now. Driving south on the expressway in autumn and winter, from the vicinity of Taichung to Tainan, it is often gray. After adding more thermal power generation units in Taiwan, the situation is expected to become worse.
Second, people in central and southern Taiwan (or the whole of Taiwan) are sacrificing their respiratory health to generate electricity. At the same time, the increase in thermal power has also brought about an increase in carbon emissions. Although officials often boast that thermal power is a clean energy source, this statement, while not as absurd as "clean coal," is absolutely a lie. Natural gas power generation is also gas-fired power generation. In other words, it still burns fossil fuels, so carbon emissions are also inevitable. In recent years, when foreign environmental protection groups have evaluated the carbon reduction performance of various countries, Taiwan has been often ranked in the bottom, which shows Taiwan's stagnant carbon reduction progress.
Third, increased emissions and carbon reduction has become just a slogan, and President Tsai’s promise of net-zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2050 is simply bluffing. Lee Yuan-tseh, former president of Academia Sinica, has indicated publicly on many occasions that this goal is impossible to achieve. Europe's carbon tax will be launched this year. As far as the impact is concerned, Taiwan's future exports and economy may have to pay carbon taxes, and its competitiveness will decline. As a citizen of the earth, Taiwan has become a bad example.
The final problem is electricity prices. When President Tsai promoted abolishing nuclear power, she once said to the public they had calculated that there would be no shortage of electricity and no increase in electricity prices. Of course, the results show those were all lies. In the past two years, Taipower has lost NT$546 billion. The reasoning used by the Tsai administration is that the cost of international fuel has risen sharply. This is true. The price of global fuel has indeed risen sharply, but in fact, policy factors cannot be overlooked: by changing nuclear power to thermal power, when fuel prices rise, the overall cost will inevitably increase even more; the guaranteed purchase price of green power is several times the average power price, etc. These factors will cause Taipower to expand its losses. The public and enterprises should be mentally prepared: the rise in power prices will continue.
From another point of view, if the Tsai administration does not abolish nuclear power, and lets nuclear one, two, and three continue to operate, even activating a fourth one, the total installed capacity of nuclear power will be as high as 7.77 million kilowatts, which can provide cheap and plentiful electricity. In addition to investing hundreds of billions of dollars to build alternative generating units—take the so-called six major power supply projects as an example, it will cost NT$681.4 billion (about US$22.5 billion), and the decommissioning of nuclear power will cost hundreds of billions, not to mention that the discard of Nuke 4 will directly cost nearly NT$300 billion (about US$9.9 billion).
The government has increased the construction of facilities for wind power and photovoltaics. Although they claim that those are not funded by the government but are investments made by developers, the truth is that the wool comes from the sheep’s back. The government has guaranteed a high purchase price for up to 20 years, which is reflected in the electricity price. Electricity users pay high electricity prices. If Taipower insists on not responding to the increase in electricity prices, then it will suffer huge losses as it is now, and in the end, taxpayers will still have to pay for the increase.
In order to carry out the Tsai administration’s plan to abolish nuclear power, taxpayers and electricity consumers have to spend trillions more. The results include high electricity prices, high air pollution, and high emissions. Are they worth it? With prohibitive costs, is abolishing nuclear power something the public should look forward to?