Taiwan weighs return to nuclear power amid AI surge and China fears

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favorite tales on this weekly publication.Taiwan is ready to vote on whether or not to return to nuclear vitality simply three months after shutting down its final reactor, as concern mounts over easy methods to provide sufficient energy to maintain its world-leading chip sector rising.The vote additionally highlights the nation’s challenges in securing steady vitality provides to outlive a possible Chinese language blockade. Launched by the 2 opposition events, which maintain a legislative majority, a referendum on Saturday will ask voters in the event that they assist restarting a reactor on the Maanshan plant in southern Taiwan, offered regulators don’t discover security issues.  The vote comes as hovering electrical energy demand to serve synthetic intelligence computing — simply as governments world wide search to chop carbon emissions — has prompted a worldwide revival of nuclear vitality.Within the US, President Donald Trump is aiming to quadruple nuclear vitality capability within the subsequent 25 years. Germany’s new authorities seems intent on revisiting the nation’s nuclear “exit”.Even Japan is reopening reactors and planning the development of recent ones 14 years after the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe.Many international observers have urged Taiwan to comply with that development, arguing that its dependency on imported fuel, coal and oil for greater than 95 per cent of its vitality makes it extremely susceptible to a Chinese language blockade. Beijing claims Taiwan as a part of its territory and has threatened to take it by pressure if Taipei refuses unification indefinitely.“Vitality is the weakest aspect in Taiwan’s resilience,” mentioned Mark Cancian on the Middle for Strategic and Worldwide Research think-tank in Washington, who co-authored a conflict sport final month that simulated a Chinese language blockade of Taiwan.“Taiwan must pay particular consideration to that,” he added, suggesting that it may achieve this by “extending the life on its current nuclear energy plant and in addition by hardening its electrical system”.Some content material couldn’t load. Verify your web connection or browser settings.Nuclear energy generated greater than half of Taiwan’s electrical energy within the Nineteen Eighties, however in Might state-owned utility TaiPower switched off the ultimate of six reactors after its 40-year working license expired. That made Taiwan the third nation to shut all its nuclear energy vegetation, following Italy and Germany.President Lai Ching-te celebrated the step as historic realisation of his Democratic Progressive social gathering’s decades-long aim of a “nuclear-free homeland”.Final week, he instructed a DPP assembly that he would oppose the referendum to restart the plant. “We are going to vote towards it collectively,” he mentioned.That stance is a part of the social gathering’s ideological roots. Fears about Taiwan’s frequent earthquakes and anger that the then-authoritarian authorities saved nuclear waste on an outlying island with out informing its Indigenous inhabitants sparked an anti-nuclear motion within the Nineteen Eighties. These activists have been on the coronary heart of the pro-democracy teams from which the DPP emerged.The 2011 Fukushima catastrophe broadened public opposition to nuclear energy, main the federal government to again an exit from the vitality supply. Two years after the DPP returned to energy in 2016, the federal government began successively shutting down reactors.However Taiwan has struggled to handle a transition to renewable vitality on the similar time that it has lower down nuclear capability. Renewables accounted for less than 13 per cent of electrical energy technology within the first half of this 12 months, far behind the federal government’s goal of 20 per cent. LNG was Taiwan’s greatest supply of energy technology at 46.2 per cent, adopted by coal at 35 per cent.In the meantime, energy demand is hovering on the worldwide AI increase. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co, the world’s largest chipmaker, which already makes use of 12 per cent of Taiwan’s whole electrical energy output, can be quickly increasing capability. Energy cuts have turn into extra frequent as TaiPower has tried to modernise its ageing grid. To stem the utility’s mounting losses, the federal government has been elevating energy costs that have been lengthy among the many world’s lowest.These strains have helped shift public attitudes in direction of nuclear vitality. In line with the non-governmental Taiwan Institute for Sustainable Vitality Analysis (TAISE), 66.1 per cent of Taiwanese now assist utilizing nuclear vitality to attain the aim of internet zero emissions by 2050, up from 58.3 per cent in 2024. Solely 33 per cent held environmental issues over nuclear vitality, lower than for coal, oil and fuel.Whereas voters have warmed to nuclear energy, urge for food for extending the lifespan of a 40-year-old reactor is much less robust, in response to the TAISE. Even Lai has indicated openness to new-generation nuclear energy options, although he stays against restarting the outdated plant.RecommendedThe results of the referendum will solely be legitimate for 2 years, nevertheless, which means that even when a majority backs a restart, the federal government may in impact ignore it, if security inspections and different procedures exceed that timeline.In distinction to the worldwide issues about Taiwan’s vitality safety, the home debate has centred on air air pollution and financial progress. “Taiwan has paid a excessive worth for phasing out nuclear,” mentioned Tung Tzu-hsien, the founding father of contract electronics producer Pegatron, in a televised debate on the referendum final week.Tung, who sits on a committee that advises Lai on local weather coverage, blasted Taipower’s transfer to restart two coal-fired energy vegetation to plug the facility hole as “absurd” and blamed the DPP for pushing Taiwan to the “backside of the category” in international carbon emissions.He additionally warned that Taiwan’s polluting vitality stability may undermine its know-how exporters’ competitiveness as main markets begin levying carbon taxes.Knowledge visualisation by Haohsiang Ko in Hong Kong