Breakdown At Taiwan's Third Nuclear Plant
By Lawrence Chung
Straits Times Taiwan Bureau
TAIPEI, Taiwan, 21 March 2001 -- Taiwan's ability to maintain nuclear safety was put to the test after one of its nuclear power plants recently ran into a safety-system failure, the first since the island began using the alternative energy 22 years ago.
The incident is a nightmare for nuclear-plant proponents, but good news for anti-nuclear activists who can now use the incident to call for a halt to the construction of the island's fourth nuclear-power plant.
At 12.46 am on Sunday, the duty officer of the Nuclear Emergency Board in Taipei received an emergency phone call from the island's third nuclear-power plant in the southern Pingtung county.
Both A and B back-up units, vital for the cooling of one of the two nuclear reactors, were not functioning.
Anxious Taiwan Power Company or Taipower specialists raced against time to repair one of the two units, each of which has two back-up generators.
Had the temperature of the reactor risen to 600 deg C in the subsequent eight hours, an unprecedented nuclear crisis would have erupted, some experts said.
The plant had to issue a Level 3A emergency alarm 15 minutes after the two units failed to function.
Worse still, a small fire apparently caused by overheating broke out at the unit partition, making immediate repair impossible.
Fortunately, a third back-up unit, a diesel-power generator which was criticised as a spendthrift addition when it was installed about 15 years ago, kicked in and ended the crisis in two hours.
'How much more luck can we have?' asked the anti-nuclear Taiwan Environmental Protection Union in a press statement.
'Taipower officials have repeatedly claimed that the odds of a nuclear accident are almost nil, and how could they explain this incident?' the union said.
It urged the government to immediately stop building its latest US$5.5 billion (S$9.8 billion) nuclear-power plant because 'the chance of a nuclear disaster is there'.
The union cited examples of the Three-Mile Island nuclear accident in the United States and the even more disastrous Chernobyl radiation leaks in the former Soviet Union.
President Chen Shui-bian, whose party advocates a nuclear-free island, only last month bowed to pressure from the opposition and abandoned his attempt to stop the fourth nuclear plant's construction, which had ignited a series of disputes that had plunged the island into political and economic woes.
Taipower officials assured the public that there was no radiation leak or damage to the third nuclear-power plant's reactor, but acknowledged that the incident came at a most unfortunate time for the company, which was preparing to restart the fourth project.
Economics Minister Lin Hsin-yi also came to Taipower's defence, saying that the accident was a mechanical problem triggered by salty deposits from the morning fog which caused circuit breakers to malfunction.
But Premier Chang Chun-hsiung said yesterday that all safety measures would be taken before the fourth nuclear project was restarted.
Source: The Straitstimes Interactive, Singapore
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