"The plans approved Monday covered taxes on sources of energy such as fossil fuels and CO2 emissions, but not the broader environment tax proposed earlier by the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research, a government-funded think tank."
and: "The energy tax would be levied on users of products such as gasoline, diesel, liquid petroleum gas, and also coal, which will lead to higher petroleum and electricity prices. The new taxes would be imposed incrementally, only reaching their full rates in the 10th year after becoming law.
Taiwan, which imports 99% of its energy needs, must "normalize energy pricing and improve energy efficiency through the taxes," said Minister without Portfolio Liang Chi-Yuan. "
which may partly explain the following:
Alarm as Taiwan wants to extend life of oldest nuclear plant
"The application is for extending the life of the plant's two generators from 40 to 60 years," the cabinet-level council said in a statement. Conservation activists Tuesday voiced severe concerns about what they called a risky plan, also citing a shortage of space to store the nuclear waste."
but: "Taiwan's carbon dioxide emissions could be 7.3 million tonnes lower each year if the nuclear power plant is allowed to keep running after 40 years of operation compared with shutting it down, government officials say."
This is a standard boiling-water reactor, built in 1978, by GE and EBASCo (now Tetra Tech EC) -- there's no reason to expect a better-than-average lifetime for this unit. I do know that a serious accident would affect the nuclear comeback. I'd rather see them shut it down on schedule (2018) than extend and regret.
Here's more on the issue of aging nuke generators from the New York Times.
This isn't good for the industry. Another Three Mile Island or Chernobyl would be bad news for a world that doesn't need bad energy news right now. Retire, retool, and replace. I'm available for road trips!
On the other hand:
Nuclear power renaissance?
Second, Finland is not going to build three nuclear power plants (despite, remember, planning to cut their C02 emissions an astounding 80% by 2050):
"Finland, which is building its fifth nuclear reactor, has yet to decide how many reactors it will need in the next decade but it will be fewer than three, Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen said Tuesday.
"I don't believe that based on calculations (on future energy needs) the government could decide (to accept) all three nuclear reactor applications," Vanhanen wrote on his blog.
Three utility groups -- Fortum, Teollisuuden Voima (TVO) and Fennovoima -- have submitted applications to the government to build a new nuclear reactor in the Nordic country.
"Each plan has to be reviewed carefully, compared with each other and the efficiency of additional nuclear energy has to be compared to other ways to cut CO2 emissions," Vanhanen said.
Part of the problem is that the Oliluoto 3 plant start-up is delayed (again). Why say you're going to build three plants when you're going to be way behind on the ones already being built?
The Finns said this earlier, anyway: Finland needs at most one more nuclear reactor by 2020: government
And we still do need to deal with nuclear waste (Yucca Mountain should NEVER have been shut down):
The pressing need for more nuclear waste storage
No comments:
Post a Comment