During her trip to Orchid Island on August 15, President Tsai Ing-wen said she will keep her promise to remove the nuclear waste and transport it somewhere else. She told local residents that they have “borne the brunt of Taiwan’s most nasty issue” and that the government will discuss compensation with them on an equal footing.
Tsai is the first president to travel to Orchid Island and meet with the indigenous people there to discuss nuclear waste face-to-face. She said the government will conduct an investigation into the “decision-making process” three decades ago which led to the choice of Orchid Island as the site for storing radioactive waste.
The state power company, Taipower, made its first shipment of nuclear waste to Orchid Island in 1982. With the last shipment in 1996, the island now has more than 97,000 55-gallon steel barrels of low-level nuclear waste, including contaminated protective shoe covers and clothing, equipment and tools, and reactor water treatment residue.
But how did the Atomic Energy Council choose the current storage site at Long Men in the first place? Before making the final decision, officials visited abandoned mines, tunnels, and high mountains throughout Taiwan as well as other uninhabited islands. The current site was chosen because it faces the Pacific Ocean in one direction and is surrounded by hills in three other directions. Another factor was that there are no inhabitants within a five kilometer radius.
The government’s original plan was to store the nuclear waste on Orchid Island temporarily as it was planning to find an ocean trench with a depth of more 6,000 meters in waters near the Philippines. However, the idea was dropped after the international community imposed a ban on the dumping of radioactive waste at sea in 1993. Since then, nuclear waste, or what the Tao tribe called “evil spirits” have been looming over Orchid Island.