Daily Lessons from Life 14 October 2014 - Taiwan reveals new plans to send nuclear waste abroad

Hkg SAR Protest - "China won't cede to HK protests, army to be used as last resort: China's ruling Communist Party believes it has offered enough concessions to Hong Kong in the past, and will give no ground to pro-democracy protests because it wants to avoid setting a precedent for reform on the mainland, sources told Reuters.

The position, arrived at during a meeting of the new National Security Commission chaired by President Xi Jinping in the first week of October, appears to give Hong Kong's leader little room for manoeuvre as he seeks to end the crisis." I believe THAT is THAT!!

"Taiwan reveals new plans to send nuclear waste abroad - AFP  Oct 14, 2014

TAIPEI - Taiwan on Tuesday unveiled plans to process nuclear waste abroad for the first time as its power plants reach capacity - but environment groups slammed the proposal as "too risky".

The government is under growing public pressure over its unpopular nuclear policy as concerns over the safety of its plants have grown since the 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan. Authorities were forced in July to seal off a new power plant due to open next year, pending a referendum on its future. But the government says Taiwan will run out of energy if it ditches nuclear power - the three plants currently operated by state-owned Taipower supply 20 per cent of the island's electricity.

"The storage sites of the two plants would run out of capacity next year and the plants would have to be shut down if these plans were not carried out," Bob Lee, spokesman for the task force, told AFP.

He added that open bidding was scheduled for next year to pick a contractor. The government and Taipower say the processing plan could significantly reduce the amount of used nuclear fuel and that only a few countries have the technology to carry it out. But the plan sparked opposition from environmental protection groups who questioned the safety of shipping the fuel.

Activist Pan Han-shen of the Tree Party warned it was "too risky". "Any risks in the process of transportation could be a huge disaster," he said. The two plants which currently store the spent fuel rods were launched in 1978 and 1981 - they will each be decommissioned once they have been operational for 40 years. Concerns about Taiwan's nuclear power facilities have mounted since 2011, when Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant was hit by a tsunami which knocked out power to its cooling systems and sent reactors into meltdown.

Like Japan, Taiwan is regularly hit by earthquakes. In September 1999 a 7.6-magnitude quake killed around 2,400 people in the island's deadliest natural disaster in recent history."

I simple marvel at the capacity for uncertainty when wise men and women with authority take risks with nuclear waste from nuclear plants that they could not 'process' into 'safe waste'!

Lessons for me are:

1. I was naïve and thought that man has mastered the skills to treat nuclear waste from nuclear plants!;

2. it is amazing how human being can take such high risks to have nuclear power without truly knowing how to make the nuclear waste SAFE! If we can't process it, let's just ship it abroad. Quietly in the past by some nations but now more 'legitimately' dispatched for 'safe processing at locations that have the technology know how to 'make safe''! Yet, the process of transporting these nuclear waste can be a big risk in itself! More so for a country with frequent earthquakes!;

3. anyway, it is a trade off for some people as they want more power to grow their economies and they are WILLING to take the risks of a mishandled or an accidental spillage of active nuclear waste! If this is the decision and wishes of the majority of the people living in a country, so be it. The truth is: it is NOT a unanimous ONE BIG MAJORITY. So, should the principle of: as long as the simple majority wants the nuclear power and knowing fully the risk involved, it should be a go? In a democracy, that is how this decision will be made. In reality, when the big minority has a very strong feeling about the benefit vs. cost, things can be very complicated and emotional! In this case, rationality takes a back seat and things WILL get ugly!

Let's hope Singaporean will NEVER have to rely on nuclear power!