Nuclear power plants in Taiwan are still a controversial issue, yet to have more transparency and caution toward it should be a consensus.

It may be debatable whether nuclear power is a safe form of energy, but there is no question that nuclear power plants must be managed with extreme caution.

A nuclear meltdown has always been a nightmarish possibility haunting what supporters argue is a clean form of energy -- at least cleaner than coal-fired electricity in terms of carbon emissions.

The public’s fears of a nuclear meltdown cannot be simply dismissed by calculations of probabilities showing the chance of such a disaster happening is low. Such fears have been intensified by the disasters at Chernobyl and Fukushima.

Opponents of nuclear power may be exaggerating their fears, but this is no ground for supporters to be complacent.

Supporters argue that good management and stringent control of the nuclear power plants will be able to prevent disasters. The argument is definitely true, but what’s the definition of good management and stringent control?

There may be standard operating procedures for running nuclear power plants, but are they fail proof? The flying of airplanes is governed by stringent rules and regulations, but air crashes do happen.

If we accept the fact that nothing man-made is perfect, then we must accept that it is possible that the running of nuclear power plants can go wrong -- one way or another.

Even if we accept the risks in return for cheap energy, at the very least we must ask how well Taiwan Power Company (Taipower) has been managing the country’s three aging nuclear power plants.

The three nuclear power plants have not been incident-free over the years although none of the accidents have developed into major disasters.

The latest scare was an alleged explosion that destroyed some equipment at the Second Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s Wanli district in May.

Opposition Legislator Huang Kuo-chang has accused Taipower of trying to cover up the incident by playing down the severity of the explosion, but the state-run utility firm has denied that it was an explosion. Taipower calls it an incident stemming from “high temperature compression.”

Huang claims the explosion occurred near the reactor’s hydrogen cooling system, and had the cooling system been damaged in the explosion, it could have resulted in a nuclear meltdown. Taipower has responded by saying the reactor did not sustain any damage in the incident.

The differences between the ways the legislator and Taipower describe the incident actually reflect the fundamental differences between the opponents and supporters of nuclear power that we mentioned at the beginning of this discussion.

The use of the generic term “explosion” falls in line with the emotional side of the public’s “exaggerated” fears, while the technical definition of the accident offered by Taipower is as rational as the pronuclear argument based on mathematical probabilities.

As members of the general public, we have to admit that we don’t have the technical know-how that Taipower experts have.

But that doesn’t mean that we, the laymen, should have blind faith in their running of the nuclear power plants. Their expertise does not necessarily guarantee fail-proof management.

We don’t mean to accuse Taipower of trying to cover up the May incident, but there must be more transparency in the management of the nuclear power plants.

Any attempts to play down the severity of any incidents without giving the public full explanations will simply fuel suspicions.

Public scrutiny is not meant to obstruct the experts’ running of the plants. It is meant to make sure that they are serious about doing the job they are supposed to be doing.

Was it pure luck that the May “explosion” did not cause damage to the cooling system of the reactor? Taipower must convince us that it is its expertise and sound management -- rather than luck -- that has been preventing any major incidents at its nuclear power plants.

The government is determined to phase out nuclear power, but until we shut down all nuclear power plants, it will take much more than praying for good luck to make sure the plants remain safe.

(Asia News Network/The China Post)
Editorial