SAFETY ISSUES:Professor Lee Chao-shing said that finding a safe medium-term storage site for spent fuel would be difficult given the nation’s geology

Taipei Times
Date: Mar 10, 2016
By: Abraham Gerber / Staff reporter

An independent agency should be established to oversee the disposal of the nation’s nuclear waste, New Power Party (NPP) Legislator Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) said yesterday, as controversy continues over plans to store spent nuclear fuel following the decommissioning of the nation’s nuclear power plants.

“The Nuclear Materials and Radioactive Waste Management Act (放射性物料管理法) is outdated and does not reflect the necessity of allowing the public to participate in the review process,” Huang said at a public hearing at the Legislative Yuan.

His New Taipei City district is home to the Guosheng Nuclear Power Plant in Wanli District (萬里) and the site of the now-sealed Fourth Nuclear Power Plant.

“The law lacks any conception of short and medium-term temporary storage, only focusing on final storage of the materials,” Huang said.

“However, we all know that final storage will not happen for the foreseeable future and we have to think about how we are going to handle the problem in the interim,” Huang said, adding that an independent agency should be established to decide the matter according to an open review process based on objective guidelines.      [FULL  STORY]