President Ma Ying-jeou says that Taiwan should look at examples from around the world when formulating its policy on nuclear power. Ma was speaking Friday during a meeting with Belgian lawmaker Sonja Becq.
The Democratic Progressive Party of President-elect Tsai Ing-wen has made scrapping nuclear power a part of its policy platform. The party hopes to shut down all of Taiwan’s nuclear power plants by 2025.
But Ma said that other countries that have attempted to take nuclear plants offline have had to reverse their decisions once it became apparent that other sources of power would not be able to meet demand.
Ma cited the examples of Japan, Germany, Switzerland, and Belgium, all of which announced that they would abandon nuclear power after the 2011 Fukushima disaster. He said that of these countries, only Germany has persisted with its goal of rejecting nuclear power.
Ma said that Belgium’s plans to abandon nuclear power began with a 2003 bill requiring all nuclear plants to shut down after 40 years in operation. The bill also called for the phasing out of nuclear power by 2025. But in 2014, Belgium decided to extend the life of two plants for another decade and to maintain flexibility in its nuclear policy.
Ma also said that Switzerland has decided to indefinitely postpone plans to phase out nuclear power. Ma said that these policy reversals show that many countries have opted for a diverse energy mix and to leave all options open.
Ma said that Taiwan should keep these countries’ experiences with nuclear power in mind when moving forward with its energy policy.