What a success! 200,000 show up for the anti-nuclear demonstration across the island yesterday, rocking the Powers That Be. From FocusTaiwan, one of the government news sites, from the government's Central News Agency (CNA):
In what organizers called the largest anti-nuclear protest in Taiwan, an estimated 200,000 people took to the streets in several parts of the island on Saturday to call for the scrapping of nuclear power plants.The government pledged to stress safety and then reeled out the propaganda:
The protest was held simultaneously in northern, central, southern and eastern Taiwan just two days before the second anniversary of the meltdown of Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant in the wake of the big earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011.
....
As of 5 p.m., the estimated number of participants in the march were more than 100,000 in northern Taiwan, more than 70,000 in southern Taiwan, more than 30,000 in central Taiwan and around 2,000 in eastern Taiwan, according to organizers.
"The government will do its best to avoid electricity shortage and restrictions, cut the impact of high electricity rates on industry and public lives, and avoid industry exodus and unemployment," he said.LOL. AFP has a nice quote from an activist who points out that polls show the public wants the plant closed. No need for a referendum, the public has spoken. Not that the government will listen....
The internet was flooded with pictures, great to see all the people come out. Nation Takes to the Streets said the Taipei Times. Well put.
A negative note: the government blocked the entry of a German environmental activist for "participating in an illegal demonstration" in 2011. They mean, for opposing nuclear power. Global Voices has a thorough review, including:
This is not the first time that Taiwan has zeroed in on the participation of foreigners in anti-nuclear activities in Taiwan, where the recent construction of the fourth nuclear power plant in Taiwan has been met with strong criticism because of security concerns. Two Japanese people from Fukushima were warned by the country's immigration office [zh] immediately after they gave a speech at an anti-nuclear demonstration on April 30, 2011.Hmmm... remember the illegal anti-Chen demonstrations. Lots of foreigners participating. I wonder how many of them were blocked from re-entering Taiwan.... I would bet money the answer is... zero.
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Daily Links
- IPS news on the recent human rights review
- Taiwan's regional security profile grows.
- Hilarious and thoughtful account from Andrew Ryan of his recent piece on Ang Lee for CNN. A must read.
- Text of keynote speech at Seminar on China's Human Rights from Taiwan journalist. Discussion of human rights and the Ma Administration in Taiwan
- Sun, Mon, Tues at sunset look for the Pan-STARRS comet.
- Chinese "professionals" can now work in Taiwan for up to three years. Another rule that is going to be utterly abused by corporations in their suicidal quest for ever cheaper labor.
- China's strategy to wear out the smaller Japanese navy.
- Fagan gets some excellent pics of eagles...
- Taiwan's indigenous missile program
- What we are fighting: the reality of Fukushima clean up.
- Taiwanese living in China can now trade A shares on China's exchanges.
- For amusement purposes only: Ma touts Taiwan's "peacemaker" role in the Senkakus mess.
[Taiwan] Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums! Delenda est, baby.
Only in Taiwan... The proposed referendum question is "Do you agree that work on the fourth nuclear power plant should be halted and that operation of the plant should never be launched?" SO... If you want to STOP the 4th Nuclear power plant vote YES and if you want it to PROCEED, vote NO.
ReplyDeleteWouldn't YES for the plant and NO to STOP the plant make more sense???
I can just see the protests leading up to the referendum.
YES! - NO Nukes!!
or
NO! We want Nukes!!
LMFAO
WayneWillow
"The government will do its best to avoid electricity shortage and restrictions"
ReplyDeleteLOL. There was a power cut in the Chunan area yesterday, right in time for the baseball game. Retaliation for protests?
Only in Taiwan... The proposed referendum question is "Do you agree that work on the fourth nuclear power plant should be halted and that operation of the plant should never be launched?" SO... If you want to STOP the 4th Nuclear power plant vote YES and if you want it to PROCEED, vote NO.
ReplyDeleteWouldn't YES for the plant and NO to STOP the plant make more sense???
I can just see the protests leading up to the referendum.
YES! NO Nukes!!
or
NO! We want Nukes!!
LMFAO
WayneWillow
are there any nuclear power plants in China that are close enough to affect Taiwan in the event of a Chernobyl-size accident?
ReplyDeleteMany nukes in China along the coast in Fujian and elsewhere. They would certainly affect Taiwan.
ReplyDelete"reality of Fukushima"
ReplyDeleteIf someone from the "other side" wrote an article that shitty you would tear it to pieces.
By slipping "microsieverts" into a discussion calibrated by "millisieverts", the author obscures the fact that, according to his own reporting, radiation at the main gate of the plant is now less than the legal annual limit for nuclear plant workers. Of course that does mean that inside the plant is toxic -- but what do you expect, it's a nuclear plant that had a frigging melt down! And it strongly suggests, as do other recent reports, that contamination to the surrounding areas is much lower. And again by the author's own reporting, this is all said to be decreasing.
I'm not saying it's not serious or people here aren't right to say no to Plant Four. But that article is crap. Being on the "right side" of an issue doesn't make biased reporting ok.
Not sure what you're complaining about. The author cites TEPCO for the radiation levels and then gives equivalents:
ReplyDeleteA Tepco spokesperson measured a radiation level of 1,710 microsieverts per hour inside the tour bus on the ocean side outside the turbine building of reactor 3, equal to 14.989,8 millisieverts or 14.9 sieverts per year. If radiation levels do not decline during the course of a year, workers risk taking in 300 times the legal annual radiation dose limit for people at nuclear facilities.
A Tepco spokesperson measured a radiation level of 1,070 per hour at a measure point on the mountainside near reactors 1 and 2, equal to 9,379 millisieverts or 9.3 sieverts per year. That would be 187 times the annual legal limit.
The Japanese government has set this limit at 50 millisieverts per year and 100 millisieverts over five years, according to Asahi Shimbun. The annual limit of 50 millisieverts in Japan is the same as the legal annual dose limit for nuclear workers in the United States. The radiation dose at the main gate of the plant was 5.0 microsieverts per hour.
Michael
"Not sure what you're complaining about"
ReplyDeleteMy problem is with the last paragraph you quoted. "5.0 microsieverts per hour" is equal to .005 millisieverts/hr, which is 43.8 millisieverts/year. Putting it only in microsieverts here just obscures the fact that exposure at the main gate is actually lower than the 50 millisievert yearly allowance he cites for nuclear workers.
The only honest way of writing that up would be to use the same units of measurement (or convert as he did above) and openly state the contrast between this relatively low number and the huge radiation doses cited in the preceding two paragraphs.
So which is more likely: that the author didn't see this, or that he did and he covered it up?
Unless I'm making a math error, that is.
And though it is beyond the scope of his article, when he talks about yearly exposure limits set by the Japanese government he could have mentioned how arbitrary the numbers they choose are.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteNever mind my comment. Your math is fine.
ReplyDeleteHe doesn't claim anything about the 5.0 microsevierts. Just gives the number. In any case, those are TEPCO numbers, and really, the total amount of radiation is a very minor issue compared to the mind boggling clean up costs.
"mind boggling clean up costs"
ReplyDeleteFair enough, but _this article_ doesn't say _anything_ about costs. It's all devoted to radiation bogeyman fear-mongering. Which of course plays a role in the costs, given that some (maybe a lot) of the expensive "clean up" of surrounding areas is geared towards setting peoples' minds at ease, not dealing with radiation dangers.
That passage is definitely misleading to anyone who doesn't sit down to look closely and go do the conversion. He's pulling one over on the reader, not making a claim. It's like if someone wrote "Taiwan has been governed with the Chinese mainland for most of the past 500 years", leaving you to look up that "most of" actually means about 300 years in the middle and that "Taiwan" didn't cover the same area all that time, etc etc.
Ok, enough ranting. Just feel the nuclear question should be approached more rationally.
Not more rationally, more openly and honestly.
ReplyDeleteThe point anon makes about scaremongering is valid; a simple experiment, though not one constituting a proof, is to ask Taiwanese adults or young adults (especially university students) how many people do think were killed by the Fukushima disaster and when they don't know suggest a mix of high and low numbers to them, e.g. 10, 20, 30, 50, 100, 500, 1000 etc. My experience is that more often than not they choose the higher numbers (the real number is 3). Their selection of numbers as high as 500 or 1000 suggests (a) a remarkable level of ignorance among a target group after two years of media propaganda (to which the Taipei Times was a minor party) and (b) a conditioned bias toward a more negative judgement in the absence of knowledge.
Perhaps the biggest danger to the anti-nuclear movement viz the possibility of losing the referendum is not the KMT's phrasing of the question (which, at least in English appears reasonably straightforward), but the fact that the anti-nuke leadership is so obviously full of shit. The anti-nuclear case is - in my opinion - strong enough to win on merit (though some of the arguments are incorrect), but the hyperbolic scaremongering of the group's leadership and allies in the media and the semi-concealed whiff of their far-left flavourings... are going to make some people more uncertain as to which way they will vote. Look at that 5th demand they have for "zero growth in electricity" for instance - totally unnecessary for the purpose of succeeding in the referendum, and a scarcely-concealed indication of ulterior political motives.
For a lot of people what they want is information, and an attempt at persuasion that respects their intellect and sense of honesty, not some daft hippie girl from the green party emoting all over the shop floor.
Apart from operating the plants safely, Taiwan would also need to find a way to store the nuclear waste.
ReplyDeleteThere are already 100.000 barrels of waste on Lanyu which need to be repackaged and removed.
The only "storage plan" currently is to ship nuclear material to North Korea, so that it can be stored there in an old coal mine. Neither South Korea nor Japan are keen on that idea, since nobody expects NK to run such a facility safely.
(a) a remarkable level of ignorance among a target group after two years of media propaganda (to which the Taipei Times was a minor party)
ReplyDeleteYes, it does suck that the pro-nuke ideologues influenced them so strongly, to push the numbers so far down. But they are like any other sociopathic Big Corporate power. They own the regulators and can control the flow of information as well as information gathering.
Michael
Sire,
ReplyDeletere the hilaruous hijinks of the radio host Andrew Ryan's caving in to Communist CHina demands from CNN to change taiwan from a nation to a territory and he was okay with that and went along with the censorship, just to get his name on CNN site, shame on him:
On Wednesday, andrew Ryan in Taipei submitted the piece, called “Why
Ang Lee’s Oscar puts identity center stage”, to CNN’s bureau in Hong
Kong.
Ryan a fullbright guy who is not too bright wrote on his blog: " CNN vetted, edited and posted it on their web site on Thursday
afternoon (Taiwan time). They would make one brief BUT MAJOR edit
after it was posted, to change a “country” to “territory” — to avoid
ruffling too many feathers in China. I preferred the original, but
understood that if I was too rigid, I RiSKED NOT BEING PUBLISHED AT ALL...at
all. After a cursory glance, pleased with the way it look, I went on
with my day."
- guest comment by R J Stern in UK
re the German bloke who was blocked at immigration for illegal stuff a few years ago, not only that but in 1998, guess what?
ReplyDeleteTaiwanese Argue Over Nobel Winner
....Associated Press ....News Archive Nov. 26, 1998 ....TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) _ Taiwan's foreign ministry has blamed bureaucratic bumbling for a decision by immigration officials to bar a Nobel Peace Prize winner from entering the country.
Jose Ramos-Horta won the 1996 prize for his work to win independence for East Timor, a former Portuguese colony annexed by Indonesia in 1976. The United Nations does not recognize Indonesian claims to East Timor.
Newspapers reported that Taiwan had barred him entry in the past to avoid antagonizing Indonesia.
Ramos-Horta's previous persona non grata status, however, had been ordered lifted by the foreign ministry last August, ministry spokesman Roy Wu told a new conference, eliminating any reason to prevent him from entering Taiwan.
Horta, a co-winner of the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize, was denied an entry permit by ROC immigration authorities for his now defunct "persona non grata" status, upon his arrival at Chiang Kai-shek International Airport at 6 p.m. on Wednesday.
ReplyDeleteKnown for his unremitting advocacy of East Timor's secession [sic.] from Indonesia, Horta was forced to spend the night at the airport's transit hotel until MOFA officials intervened to clear up the dispute four hours later.
Annoyed by his delayed admission to Taiwan, Horta terminated his visit and flew back to Australia on Thursday.
Horta, who gained further international fame for exposing Indonesian atrocities against the people of East Timor to the United Nations, said prior to his departure that he could not understand why airport officials stopped him, since he entered Taiwan without hindrance in August 1997.
"...to push the numbers so far down."
ReplyDeleteThree people died. That is the actual number. Those workers died from the effects of the earthquake and tsunami, not from radiation exposure. If you believe the number is higher, perhaps you can cite evidence or provide a rational basis for this.
Three people died. That is the actual number. Those workers died from the effects of the earthquake and tsunami, not from radiation exposure. If you believe the number is higher, perhaps you can cite evidence or provide a rational basis for this.
ReplyDeleteRadiation from Fukushima is now out in the environment and ingested by humans, where it will cause cancers, some of which will be fatal. Are you not aware of the findings of the last century of modern science? The total number of deaths from Fukushima will be unknown and likely unquantifiable except in very broad epidemiological terms, but given the amount of the release it will likely be high.
Michael
" total number of deaths from Fukushima will be unknown and likely unquantifiable except in very broad epidemiological terms, but given the amount of the release it will likely be high"
ReplyDeleteYou reject the WHO report? Any number of unnatural deaths is "high", but surely you don't mean statistically high, or in comparison to deaths from coal? There is scientific uncertainty about the exact dangers of radiation, but everything I've seen is leading in the direction of -- not nearly as dangerous as people imagine.
If you're imagining "nuclear = some increased cancer, even if statistically very little" vs. "renewable = none" then I can understand what you mean. If that's the option we're really facing. But if the reality is "nuclear = some" vs. "coal = definitely more", and that's definitely what it is in China, India, etc., if not in Taiwan, then this is "radiation mania".
Of course, and I wish the anti-nuclear people would make that distinction more often and more openly themselves and report the very low actual number in clear distinction to the very high speculative numbers, rather than avoid numbers altogether and rely on highly-charged insinuation from generic concepts like "public safety".
ReplyDeleteYou reject the WHO report? Any number of unnatural deaths is "high", but surely you don't mean statistically high, or in comparison to deaths from coal?
ReplyDelete*sigh* nobody mentioned nukes vs. coal. They both are dangerous and stupid, and both have to go.
"*sigh*"
ReplyDeleteLook I'm not trying to try your patience. The problem is that nuclear power is being demonized as a terrorizing evil from the world of manga. That's not to say it's good. But it has costs (perhaps underestimated) and risks (definitely overestimated) and neither is apocalyptic.
You have to look at what you're comparing it to, and that's where coal comes in. I know you think Taiwan can survive on renewables. I'm less certain, and even if it's possible it likely means making an advance decision for "economic restructuring" -- that is, shipping power intensive industries out to other countries, who can use coal or nuclear power and hey it's not my problem if it's not in my backyard.
But maybe you're right that renewables could work. Natural gas might be ok too. If not, though -- and it's no sure thing, even you'll admit -- then it's more coal and more warming in the short term and nuclear power is better than that.
You have to look at what you're comparing it to, and that's where coal comes in
ReplyDeleteNope, don't have to make this comparison. Your argument is completely false. I'm not comparing it to coal, but to wind. It's a totally false dichotomy to maintain we have to choose either coal or nukes. Coal sucks, nukes suck, both have to go.
Michael
If you're 100% certain (or close) that wind (and current or upcoming storage technologies) can do it, then what you say is fine.
ReplyDeleteIf someone is not certain, or close to certain, then we are comparing to coal. So a false argument to you, sure of renewables, is not false to me, not so sure of renewables as currently existing.
I understand that you're certain, but this can't be proved until it is done. For Taiwan to just declare they're going to do it is a risk, and -- if you accept my argument that radiation fear is overblown -- it's a risk that has to be compared to the alternatives: nuclear power or the stopgap of burning more coal.
Thanks for your input.
ReplyDelete"But maybe you're right that renewables could work."
ReplyDeleteThere can be no doubt that renewables would "work". The question is at what costs, and with what implications for electricity and land use.