Quake-Prone Taiwan Halts Nuclear Expansion as Japan Struggles at Fukushima

[phantom power]

Taiwan Power Co., which operates the island’s three atomic-power plants and is building a fourth, halted plans for additional reactors after an earthquake and tsunami crippled a nuclear plant in Japan.

Taipower, as the utility is known, canceled a tender to hire advisers for two more reactors to its No. 4 nuclear plant under construction, Chief Engineer Roger Lee said yesterday. The government has frozen a review of the state-run utility’s application to extend the life of its 33-year-old No. 1 plant, since the earthquake, which also sparked tsunami warnings for Taiwan’s northern coastline.

“Taipower would rather take more time and spend more money so the public won’t worry,” Lee said in an interview in the capital Taipei. The company is studying how to strengthen the stations’ ability to withstand quakes and tsunamis, he said.

Taiwan and Japan lie on the Pacific Ring of Fire, an area prone to earthquakes that also stretches from Chile to California and Indonesia, where a 2004 earthquake sparked a tsunami that killed more than 220,000. Taipower’s three plants, like the stricken 40-year-old Fukushima Dai-Ichi station north of Tokyo, were built on the ocean. They provide about 20 percent of the island’s power and are as close as five kilometers (3 miles) from an active quake fault line, according to Lee.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-12/taiwan-halts-plans-to-build-atomic-reactors-after-japan-crisis.html