Taiwan may restart nuclear power plant in 2028, minister says | Hacker News Reader

Taiwan may restart nuclear power plant in 2028, minister says

energyconnects.com

40 pointsmpweiher20 comments

I wish Taiwan’s reactors were never shut down in the first place, and I hope Taiwan can hold out long enough to get it started back up again. It’s a step towards being able to withstand a blockade (Taiwan lacks oil, gas, and goal resources, so it relies on imports). If PRC chose to attack a nuclear power plant, it might give the necessary pressure for international intervention.

For what it’s worth, I’ve personally walked around the nuclear containment area on Orchid island and swam in the waters around it. It’s a well managed and nice place.

Hasn't Russia chosen to attack a nuclear power plant in their recent aggression? Unless you're thinking of a more destructive kind of attack, I probably shouldn't be counting on international intervention.

I don’t mean to suggest it alone would tip the scales. And I agree the hope for international intervention is dimmer than it ever has been. But it would be one thing on the scales, as it has been in Ukraine as well. While there has not been direct military intervention in Ukraine, the support that has been provided relies on political popularity, and Russia’s endangering of Zaporizhzhia has contributed to the disdain of and attention towards Russia’s invention.

This is a fairly significant policy shift - the incumbent DPP has historically been very anti-Nuclear due to the Taiwan's nuclear program historic links to authoritarian rule back in the 1980s along with fear after the Fukushima disaster back in 2011. The party itself was founded in part due to opposition to the Lungmen project back in the early 1980s [0]

[0] - https://www.tepu.org.tw/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/%E5%8F%B0...

Neither of those are sensible reasons to not use nuclear power.

Yet those reasons are why anti-Nuclear sentiment is mainstream in Taiwan.

The fact that the DPP is contravening one of it's core tenets since it was founded in 1986 is a massive policy shift, as a major reason the party was formed was due to mass opposition to the Lungmen nuclear project.

It's the equivalent of the modern DNC choosing to drop support for the ACA or the modern GOP choosing to support Roe vs Wade.

> Yet those reasons are why anti-Nuclear sentiment is mainstream in Taiwan.

A "sentiment" is just manufactured by politicians and the media. I would say if you are one of the only place who can build and run a 2nm process node, a nuclear power plant should not scare you too much.

The DPP has been very dumb regarding pure economic policies. This is one of the reason they now have western countries level growth.

They got into the whole renewable energy narrative but they forgot one of the reason for the success of Taiwan is due to the fact that they largely subsidized energy.

Electricity in Tawain was (or still is?) incredibly cheap and they even subsidized gas.

It is good that they stopped their irrational opposition to the best source of electricity available.

That most probably means Taiwan is planning to get nuclear weapons. Not a bad idea given its neighbors.

That is if China hasn't invaded

My guess is that it’s more about a prolonged blockade rather than a weapons development.

When will they have enough plutonium, if they're only starting in 2028?

the government in taiwan ratified the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, so to develop the bomb, as I think you are alluding, would be a serious breach

I think we are well past the point where belief in a rules-based world order turns from optimism to delusion. Entrench yourself behind entire libraries of law books if you wish, it only makes for spectacular kindling.

To paraphrase Thucydides: the nuclear capable countries do what they want, and the non-nuclear countries suffer what they must.

> the nuclear capable countries do what they want, and the non-nuclear countries suffer what they must.

This isn't ironclad as some people believe. There were multiple attacks on nuclear nations from non-nuclear in the last 2 years.

It's not quite that easy to flaunt the NPT. If it were, we'd have 50 nuclear nations by now, if not more. The idea of the NPT is that you are given access to peaceful nuclear technology in exchange for accepting inspections by the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency). The IAEA inspectors are quite smart, it's not easy to start purifying plutonium out of spent fuel without them noticing. Plutonium is a super-nasty substance to work with, and that's when it's pure. Spent fuel is orders of magnitude nastier, if you plan to do chemical reactions with it. You can't just hide a plutonium purification facility in a janitor's room somewhere. Now getting from zero experience with plutonium to the ability to do a dash for a bomb, that's a huge leap. It is not impossible. In the nuclear proliferation literature there is the concept of "sheltered pursuit". One of the nuclear powers is basically allowing you to disregard the NPT, and pursue nuclear weapons. But guess what? Most nuclear powers are happy to let the nuclear club remain small.

In the particular case of Taiwan, how would sheltered pursuit look like? The US would allow Taiwan to seek nuclear capability. But China would certainly see this as a reason to strike. I think a lot of the world would understand and accept a Chinese preemptive strike if China could show evidence that Taiwan was trying to acquire nukes, and the IAEA concurred.

>The US would allow Taiwan to seek nuclear capability. But China would certainly see this as a reason to strike.

China already sees a reason to strike. Right now, it's about whether Taiwan has a deterrent to them doing so.

>In the nuclear proliferation literature there is the concept of "sheltered pursuit". One of the nuclear powers is basically allowing you to disregard the NPT, and pursue nuclear weapons.

Or you develop everything but the core, some safe design that needs no testing (Trinity worked correctly on the first try, obviously. Something that needs a small core, minimum plut. This can be done in a way (and quickly enough) that you can hope to keep it secret from espionage.

Then you just make sure you have enough spent fuel that when you're ready for that part, you can get 3+ cores' worth in a hurry. Yes, the inspectors will catch on, but not before everything's done. Then you tell the inspectors to fuck off. Crisis averted.

>I think a lot of the world would understand and accept a Chinese preemptive strike if China could show evidence that Taiwan was trying to acquire nukes,

Personally, I think it's a shame that Ukraine didn't trade a couple dozen to Taiwan back in the 90s, in exchange for help rejiggering the electronics on their own nukes. Both nations could have walked away with a couple dozen, and the world would be far more peaceful today.

> Then you just make sure you have enough spent fuel that when you're ready for that part, you can get 3+ cores' worth in a hurry.

Lots of things about nuclear weapons are classified, but we can use some declassified numbers from the Manhattan project. The ratio of uranium fuel to plutonium end result was about 4000 to 1 [1].

  > Approximately 4000 pounds (1814.36 kg) of uranium were needed to produce 1 pound (0.45 kg) of plutonium.

At 6.2 kg per core, 3 cores would require 74 tons of uranium. That's about 50% more than what a plant like the Maanshan nuclear power plant (the one we are talking about here) would burn in one year. Except, or course, that commercial reactors burn uranium to a high degree, so the spent fuel is exactly worthless for weapons purposes. You need to burn the fuel 10 times less to have a chance to extract weapons grade Plutonium. So, that dash for 3 bombs would take 15 years, if by some miracle you could use the reactors 100% of the time only for the purpose of creating spent fuel for the plutonium production. Of course, the problem is that you'd need to buy that fuel from some suppliers, and the suppliers are going to ask questions why you are burning 10 times more fuel then you should (they are most likely legally obligated to report you if they suspect anything non-kosher is going on).

[1]https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/manhattan-project-science-a...

I suspect that the minimum qty of plut is far lower, at least for a simple device. They don't need multi-megaton, after all. I suspect the minimum qty is down around or just under 2kg per core. This is more or less an open secret, Taiwan would be aware of that (but, so would China).

Your other numbers check out though, best I can tell.

Taiwan could have had the bomb decade ago already but Uncle Sam already said no no https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/nuclear-vault/2019-0...

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