Taiwan's Nuclear Debate: Anti-nuclearism was once the shared language of the democratic movement, but the climate crisis has reshuffled every hand

30-Second Overview: On August 23, 2025, Taiwan held a referendum asking "whether to restart Nuclear Power Plant No. 3." 4.34 million people voted in favor, with 74% approval, but lost because the turnout was only 29.53%, failing to meet the 5-million-vote threshold. This is Taiwan's third nuclear referendum in forty years—the 2018 "Nuclear for Green" passed, the 2021 Nuclear Power Plant No. 4 commercial operation was rejected, and the 2025 Nuclear Power Plant No. 3 extension hit the threshold wall—yet the ground beneath has hardly moved with the votes. More paradoxically, the very government that wrote "nuclear-free homeland" into its party platform, with the President publicly casting a dissenting vote, is the one pushing the reactor, shut down just three months prior, toward restart. Anti-nuclearism was once the shared language of Taiwan's democratic movement; after the climate crisis arrived, every side in this debate has been reshuffled, and Taiwan remains without consensus.

On the evening of August 23, 2025, the Central Election Commission's vote count froze: the Nuclear Power Plant No. 3 extension referendum had 4,341,432 votes in favor and 1,511,693 votes against¹. The "yes" votes were nearly three times the "no" votes, with 74.17% saying "yes"².

By the common democratic intuition, the outcome of this debate should have been clear. But it lost.

Because the Referendum Act stipulates that the number of "yes" votes must exceed one-quarter of the total number of voters nationwide; the threshold this time was 5,000,523 votes. With a turnout of only 29.53%, the "yes" votes did not even reach the threshold¹. Huang Kuo-chang, chairman of the People First Party and the referendum proposer, said after the vote count that the "yes" votes for this referendum "far exceeded the 'no' votes by nearly three times"³. Cui Suxin, spokesperson for the National Abolition of Nuclear Energy Action Platform, pointed out: "Even though the 'yes' votes are higher than the 'no' votes, the final referendum result did not pass and has no legal effect."⁴ These two sentences refer to the same set of numbers but draw opposite conclusions.

Won the debate, lost the system. This paradox of the summer of 2025 is the entry point to understanding the entire Taiwan nuclear energy debate: on the surface, it asks "whether nuclear energy is good," but underneath, it argues about something else.

The Yellow Flag that Said "I Am a Human, I Am Anti-Nuclear"

To understand why this debate is so difficult, we must return to when it was not originally an "energy debate." In January 2013, a group of artists and cultural figures initiated a petition, designing a yellow flag with red text that read "I Am a Human, I Am Anti-Nuclear"⁵. On March 9 of that year, approximately 220,000 people took to the streets across Taiwan—120,000 in Taipei, 30,000 in Taichung, 70,000 in Tainan, and 2,000–3,000 in Taitung—marking the largest-scale march in the history of Taiwan's anti-nuclear movement⁶. This yellow flag was planted at the doors of bookstores, hung in coffee shop windows, and stuck on young people's backpacks, becoming a visual birthmark for a generation.

But the roots of this flag go much deeper than 2013, and initially had little to do with nuclear energy. In 1986, residents of Lugang heard that the US company DuPont was coming to set up a titanium dioxide plant. Local teacher Li Dongliang initiated a petition and street march, chanting "I Love Lugang, Not DuPont"⁷. The following March, DuPont announced it would cancel the plant; in August of the same year, the Environmental Protection Bureau was established⁸. The Lugang anti-DuPont movement was an anti-pollution movement, not inherently anti-nuclear—but it was the seed of Taiwan's post-war street environmental movement. That same energy quickly flowed toward another target: Nuclear Power Plant No. 4.

In 1988, residents of Gongliao established the Yanliao Anti-Nuclear Self-Help Association⁹. This plant, later named "Longmen" (Nuclear Power Plant No. 4), had been proposing the site selection in Yanliao since 1980. After thirty-plus years of construction, it has generated zero commercial electricity¹⁰. The most tragic page in between was the "Gongliao 1003 Incident" in 1991: during the protest, a resident drove a car and killed security police officer Yang Chaojing, causing the movement to fall into a low point⁹. In 1994, Gongliao held a local referendum, with 96.13% of voters opposing Nuclear Power Plant No. 4—although the Referendum Act had not yet passed, this vote had no legal effect¹¹.

📝 Curator's Note

The common narrative is "anti-nuclear is a progressive value, so the progressive camp is anti-nuclear." But this causality is actually reversed. Taiwan's anti-nuclear movement is unique because it grew in the crack where the martial law regime was loosening. Sociologist Ho Ming-hsiu writes directly in his research at Cambridge University: "The rise of anti-nuclear voices is closely related to democratic opening."¹² In other words, Taiwanese people took to the streets in the 1980s and 90s to oppose nuclear energy, truly clashing with an authoritarian government that did not allow people to speak; Nuclear Power Plant No. 4 was merely one of the few concrete targets that could unite people in that era. Anti-nuclearism thus inherited all the legitimacy of the democratic movement. This also planted the foreshadowing for thirty years later: when nuclear energy became a "climate issue," this moral framework bound to democracy could no longer handle the new questions.

Pushing this origin to its highest point was one person's body.

On the morning of April 22, 2014, former DPP Chairman Lin Yi-hsiung entered the Yiguang Church in Taipei and began an indefinite fast, demanding the halt of Nuclear Power Plant No. 4 construction¹³. The location of Yiguang Church itself is a wound—on February 28, 1980, Lin Yi-hsiung's mother and a pair of twin daughters were stabbed to death in the old residence here, an event known as the "Lin Family Tragedy," which remains unsolved to this day¹⁴. Lin Yi-hsiung is a victim of the Formosa Incident outside the DPP, and one of the first elected DPP chairmen; his fast connected the anti-nuclear movement with the bloodline of Taiwan's democratic movement into one.

Nine days later, this fast ended. On April 27, the ruling Ma Ying-jeou government and the Kuomintang reached a consensus: Nuclear Power Plant No. 4 Unit 1 would be sealed after safety inspection, and Unit 2 would be stopped; on April 28, the Executive Yuan officially announced the sealing; on April 30, Lin Yi-hsiung stopped fasting¹³.

It is worth remembering: The government that pressed the pause button on Nuclear Power Plant No. 4 was not the anti-nuclear DPP, but the ruling Kuomintang government. This detail foreshadows the most chaotic part of the subsequent debate—the stance of every side is not as stable as you think.

Three Votes Over Seven Years, Yet the Ground Barely Moved

The year after Lin Yi-hsiung's fast, the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011 had already flipped global nuclear politics¹⁰. Taiwanese society also learned, in these years, to use a new tool to handle this issue: referendums.

But the answers this tool gave were different each time.

On November 24, 2018, the "Nuclear for Green" referendum (Case No. 16) passed. It sought to abolish the statutory deadline in the Electric Power Act stating "nuclear power generation equipment shall cease operation before 2025"—5,895,560 votes in favor, with a turnout of 54.83%¹⁵. On the surface, this was a major victory for pro-nuclear forces.

On December 18, 2021, the "Nuclear Power Plant No. 4 Commercial Operation" referendum (Case No. 17) was rejected. 3,804,689 votes in favor, 4,262,517 against, with a turnout of 41.09%, failing to meet the threshold¹⁶. Nuclear Power Plant No. 4, which had been built for thirty years without generating electricity, was formally sentenced to death by the people.

On August 23, 2025, it was the opening one: the Nuclear Power Plant No. 3 extension referendum (Case No. 21), 74% in favor but stuck at the threshold¹.

Three votes over seven years, with approval rates dropping from 59% to 47% and then bouncing back to 74%, yet the results were Pass, Reject, Hit Threshold—like three dice, each time showing different numbers. Direct democracy can handle an arithmetic problem like "how much should electricity prices rise," but cannot handle a difficult problem where scientific judgment and value sorting are intertwined.

Even more difficult is the paradox left by "Nuclear for Green." The vote in 2018 clearly abolished the 2025 non-nuclear deadline legal provision, but the subsequent DPP government chose to voluntarily not extend the service, and Taiwan continued to move step-by-step toward a nuclear-free status by 2025¹⁷. Therefore, the saying "the nuclear-free homeland has already become invalid" circulated on the internet, which Fact-Checking Center Taiwan determined was misinformation: what was abolished was only the timeline in the Electric Power Act, but the "nuclear-free homeland" goal revealed in Article 23 of the Basic Environmental Act remains effective¹⁷. The law was dismantled halfway, but the policy did not loosen its grip—this is the most typical shape of Taiwan's nuclear energy discussion: every "win" comes with an unresolved tail.

A Government That Shut Down a Reactor and Then Pushed to Restart It

In May 2025, Taiwan's power grid experienced a historic moment.

On the evening of May 17, Nuclear Power Plant No. 3 Unit 2 began load reduction, disconnected at night, and officially shut down on the early morning of May 18¹⁸. This was the first time Taiwan's power grid had completely no nuclear power. Some media described Taiwan as becoming the "Asia's First, World's Second" nuclear-free homeland—but this claim needs caution, as Italy had already stopped domestic nuclear power as early as 1990¹⁹.

According to the "nuclear-free homeland" script, the story should have ended here. But the events that happened in the following months tore up the script.

Just four days before the shutdown, on May 13, 2025, the Legislative Yuan passed the third reading of the Amendment to Article 6 of the Nuclear Reactor Facility Control Act, with 61 votes in favor and 50 against, adding a clause that "licenses can be applied for extension after expiration," with the operating life extended to a maximum of 40 plus 20, totaling 60 years²⁰. Nuclear Power Plant No. 3 Unit 2's license exactly expired on May 17—the amendment was passed four days before expiration.

By November 27, the Ministry of Economic Affairs determined the evaluation results: Nuclear Power Plant No. 1 is infeasible due to equipment demolition and being the same type as Fukushima; Nuclear Power Plants No. 2 and No. 3 have restart feasibility, requiring 1.5 to 2 years of self-inspection²¹. In March 2026, the Lai Ching-te government announced that Nuclear Power Plants No. 2 and No. 3 meet the restart conditions, and Taipower submitted the application to the Nuclear and Radiation Safety Administration; Nuclear Power Plant No. 3 may restart as early as 2028²².

Thus appeared this scene: a government that wrote "nuclear-free homeland" into its party platform, personally shut down the last reactor on the island, and three months later personally pushed it toward restart.

In the middle was Lai Ching-te, who offered a stance called "pragmatic." He proposed three principles: "nuclear safety assured, nuclear waste solved, social consensus," and emphasized "these three principles are indispensable," plus two musts—the Nuclear and Radiation Safety Administration must formulate measures, and Taipower must complete self-inspection²³. But on August 13, 2025, ten days before the referendum, he publicly stated: "On 8/23 referendum I will go vote, let us together cast a dissenting vote."²⁴

⚠️ Controversial Viewpoint

How to read a government publicly opposing a referendum on "restarting its own power plant" depends on which side you stand on.

Pro-nuclear forces see contradiction and buck-passing: If you are sending the application for restart, why call on people to vote against it? Kuomintang Chairman Chu I-lun advocates that the government should "rebuild energy security and resilience" and "pragmatically adjust erroneous energy policies"²⁵.

The Lai Ching-te government's explanation is about procedure and authorization: The referendum case was proposed by the opposition parties and tied to "immediate continuation," which is a different path from the government's主张 of "Nuclear and Radiation Safety Administration把关, Taipower self-inspection before discussion"; voting against it is opposing "skipping safety procedures to restart immediately," not opposing nuclear energy itself. Premier Chuo Rong-tai explained this pragmatism more plainly: "Electricity is computing power, computing power is national power," "anti-nuclear is not a sacred tablet"²⁶.

Both readings hold up, depending on whether you focus on the "outcome (whether to have nuclear power)" or the "procedure (how to decide)." This is precisely the epitome of why Taiwan's nuclear energy discussion is unsolvable—even the same action of the same government can be honestly read as two opposite things.

The Loudest Pro-Nuclear Flagbearer is a Laptop Boss

If the anti-nuclearism of the martial law generation was a moral movement, then the most surprising aspect of the resurgence of pro-nuclear voices in recent years is its highest-decibel spokesperson: standing on the front line, with the heaviest weight, is a laptop entrepreneur.

Hsueh Shih-hsiung, Chairman of Pegatron, has become the highest-decibel voice in Taiwan's pro-nuclear discourse in recent years. His words are direct and leave no room for ambiguity: "Not just Taiwan, including globally, if you do not rely on nuclear energy, you rely on solar plus wind power to save the earth, there is no hope."²⁷ He advocates that nuclear electricity costs about 1.42 NTD per kWh, and criticizes many international large companies pursuing RE100 (100% renewable energy) as "ideal but somewhat castles in the air," believing that CFE (24-hour carbon-free electricity) including nuclear energy "can better achieve carbon neutrality goals"²⁸.

This is the most critical change after the Taiwan nuclear energy discussion was reshuffled by the climate crisis: the pro-nuclear discourse has been de-ideologized. Its starting point has shifted from "nuclear energy is safe" to "carbon reduction is non-negotiable," "data centers consume electricity," "energy cannot be interrupted"—these are industrial realities.

The pro-nuclear camp can roughly be divided into three sub-groups, each with different discursive focuses. The science-popularization camp, represented by Huang Shih-hsiu, founder of "Nuclear Energy Rumors Terminator," focuses on cost: "Nuclear electricity costs 1.5 NTD per kWh, renewable energy 5.5 NTD per kWh."²⁹ The academic camp, represented by Ye Zong-guang of National Tsing Hua University, focuses on technical clarification, for example, emphasizing that "the Hengchun Fault near Nuclear Power Plant No. 3 and the 'fault fracture zone' under the plant site are different, and the outside world often confuses the two"³⁰. The industrial camp is this group of entrepreneurs, like Hsueh Shih-hsiung.

Even NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang joined in on August 22, 2025, the day before the referendum, saying nuclear energy "is an excellent option"³¹.

💡 Did You Know

Huang Shih-hsiu also has a more intense rhetoric that has circulated widely: "Anti-nuclear is anti-American; anti-nuclear is selling out the country; anti-nuclear is licking the Communists."²⁹ This sentence directly connects energy choices with national identity, making it one of the most aggressive discourses in the pro-nuclear camp. Taiwan.md places it here verbatim, not to endorse it, but to truthfully present the temperature of this debate—when nuclear energy is tied into geopolitics and unification-independence coordinates, originally rational discussions of engineering and cost easily turn into a loyalty test of "whether you love Taiwan." This heating up is shared by both anti-nuclear and pro-nuclear sides; the higher it rises, the further consensus gets.

But be careful of a common misreading: you cannot say "the DPP has already flipped to pro-nuclear" just because the industrial sector and young people are pro-nuclear.

The DPP's party platform has not changed, "nuclear-free homeland" remains; the government has only opened a narrow door for "advanced nuclear energy, restart after safety inspection." More importantly, even the DPP's own supporters have split. According to a poll by GVM and the Taiwan Foundation for Sustainable Energy in October 2024, among DPP supporters, 45.2% are anti-nuclear and 44.3% are pro-nuclear, almost a fifty-fifty split³².

The Younger, the More Pro-Nuclear—a Generation Without Fukushima Memory

The clearest place for this crack is age.

The same GVM poll shows that 63.1% of the overall population supports nuclear power; and for the youngest generation, aged 18 to 29, the pro-nuclear proportion is as high as 70.8%, fully 20 percentage points higher than the 50.2% for those over 70 years old. The younger, the more pro-nuclear.

This is almost the reverse of the anti-nuclear tendency of the martial law generation. The reason is not hard to understand: people who took to the streets back then had memories of Chernobyl, Fukushima, and the fear of Gongliao and Lanyu; while today's climate generation grew up with nuclear disasters as historical terms in textbooks, and their current anxiety is whether warming, air pollution, and power shortages will cause Taiwan's industries to flee. The same progressive value of "for the good of the next generation," the two generations read opposite answers—the former felt that anti-nuclear was protecting the next generation from disasters, the latter felt that carbon reduction was leaving the earth for the next generation.

Most of the climate generation no longer hangs that 2013 yellow flag. However, young people being pro-nuclear is more like polling trends and individual choices; Taiwan does not have an organized "Youth Pro-Nuclear Grand Alliance" with leaders mobilizing, equivalent to the Anti-Nuclear Platform back then. Writing it as an organized movement would mislead readers.

Ten Thousand Years on the Fault Line

Reshuffle as it may, the place where this debate truly gets stuck, where neither side can convince the other, is two physical facts that neither can avoid: earthquakes, and nuclear waste.

First, earthquakes. One of the core scientific arguments of the anti-nuclear camp is the location of Nuclear Power Plant No. 3. Geologist Chen Wen-shan points out: "The Hengchun Fault passes through the gate of Nuclear Power Plant No. 3, at a distance of only about 900 meters from the reactor," and emphasizes "the fact that the fault is inside the plant site is certain"³³. Gan Chong-wei of the Green Party is more specific: "The turbine generator building of Nuclear Power Plant No. 3 Unit 1 is built directly on the fracture zone of the Hengchun Fault."³⁴ Geologist Li Xi-di cites evaluation data, questioning Nuclear Power Plant No. 3's safety mechanism under the maximum earthquake: "the ground motion acceleration is as high as 1.384G, which is more than three times the design value adopted at the time"³⁵.

The pro-nuclear camp does not deny the existence of the fault, but their framing is different. Ye Zong-guang mentioned earlier argues that the outside world often confuses the "Hengchun Fault near the plant site" with the "fracture zone under the plant site," and they are not the same thing³⁰.

📝 Curator's Note

There is a very noteworthy detail here: in the seismic resistance controversy, both the anti-nuclear and pro-nuclear sides actually use the same set of numbers made by Taipower itself—the original design value of 0.4G, the reinforced 0.72G, and the 1.384G evaluated when the fault actually moves, all from Taipower's own reports. The difference is not in the data, but in the framework. The anti-nuclear side says "the evaluated value is several times the design value, too dangerous"; the pro-nuclear side says "the plant building has been reinforced, the fracture zone is not the same fault, no problem." The same set of numbers, two stories. This is precisely why the nuclear energy discussion cannot end by "laying out scientific evidence"—when the evidence itself can be interpreted in two legitimate ways, the divergence is not at the fact level, but at the value level: how much earthquake risk are you willing to bear for carbon reduction? This question has no objective answer.

If earthquakes are a probability question of "whether it will happen," then nuclear waste is a certain problem to face, with a time scale longer than imaginable.

Taiwan has already accumulated over 19,000 bundles of high-level nuclear waste and 210,000 barrels of low-level nuclear waste, yet has not even one statutory final disposal site—this is the number repeatedly emphasized by anti-nuclear groups like the Earth公民 Foundation³⁶. As of May 2026, the spent nuclear fuel (high-level waste) from the three nuclear power plants totals 21,527 bundles³⁷. Former State Councilor Lin Tzu-lun explains the ethical core of this matter clearly: "Using nuclear power is transferring the cost, risk, and responsibility of nuclear waste disposal to the next generation."³⁸

The scale of the problem is most startlingly seen in the Control Yuan's investigation. The Control Yuan's report states: "Basically, there is no final disposal site for high-level radioactive waste on the Taiwan island," and warns that even "storage caves buried 500 meters deep will emerge on the surface after 50,000 years"—because Taiwan is located in an active orogenic belt, with crustal displacement exceeding one centimeter per year, while high-level nuclear waste requires isolation for a million-year level³⁹. Control Yuanist Tian Qiujin's two questions of doubt are almost the footnote for this whole matter: "After spending 60 billion NTD, will we really find a final disposal site?" "The backend fund is the coffin capital of nuclear power plants; once spent, it's gone."⁴⁰

The entire high-level nuclear waste final disposal plan is divided into five stages, expected to be completed from 2005 to 2055, with a total cost of about 60 billion NTD (about 36.2 billion NTD already spent)⁴¹. That is to say, by 2055—if everything goes smoothly—Taiwan will have just "built" the disposal site, but the thing it needs to stably guard must withstand tens of thousands of years of crustal movement.

Nuclear waste needs a land stable for 100,000 years; Taiwan stands on a constantly moving fault line. This is the deepest scar of this debate—it forces an island with not-so-ideal geological conditions to answer whether it wants to, and can, take responsibility for an energy source that will leave a ten-thousand-year legacy. This question cannot produce a winner; what remains is whether one is willing to bear it.

The "Canned Factory" on Lanyu

When we argue about nuclear energy in Taipei, in the Legislative Yuan, before the referendum ballot boxes, there is a group of people who have never been in the center of this debate, yet have already borne its cost for over forty years.

Lanyu.

In 1974, the government decided to set up a low-level nuclear waste storage site on this small island inhabited by the Tao (Yami) people, without informing the island's residents; construction started in 1978, and it was put into use in 1982, with the outside world claiming it was building a "canned factory"⁴². To this day, this storage site holds 97,672 barrels of low-radioactive nuclear waste—respectively from Nuclear Power Plants No. 1, No. 2, and No. 3—and stopped receiving waste after reaching saturation in 1996⁴².

The Tao people's resistance continued for decades: the "Exorcise Evil Spirits" action in 1988, the "One Person One Stone to Fill the Port" in 1995, trying to block the port for transporting waste⁴². On August 1, 2016, Tsai Ing-wen, as President, apologized to indigenous peoples, with Lanyu nuclear waste being one item⁴³.

But what best illustrates the mood of this island is the rejection in 2019.

In November of that year, the government announced a retroactive compensation plan: a one-time compensation of 2.55 billion NTD, followed by 220 million NTD every three years⁴⁴. The Tao people rejected it. Lanyu elder Lin Hsin-yu said firmly: "As long as nuclear waste is not moved out of Lanyu, such death, such extinction of the tribe will continue. 'I solemnly declare, we will not take a single penny!'"⁴⁴ What they wanted was not money, but to move the waste away—the deadline for removal promised in the 1990s (originally 2002) has been delayed to this day⁴².

✦ Lanyu's "we will not take a single penny" is the voice that should be heard most in the entire nuclear energy discussion, yet is most often overlooked. It reminds us: the cost of nuclear power is never just written on the electricity bill. When both sides of the debate are calculating "how many NTD per kWh," "how many tons of carbon reduction," there is a cost silently paid by a group of people who have no seat at the decision-making table, using forty years of land and dignity.

Power That Lasts Ten Days, Uranium That Lasts Eighteen Months

What made the pro-nuclear discourse turn red again in recent years, besides climate, is another sharper word: war.

Taiwan's energy import dependency in 2024 was as high as 95.8%—almost all energy relies on imports⁴⁵. Among them, the statutory safety stock for natural gas is about 11 days, coal about 41 days, while a batch of nuclear fuel can be used for about 18 months at a time⁴⁶. The pro-nuclear camp thus proposes an "energy security" argument: if the Taiwan Strait is blocked, ships carrying natural gas cannot enter, and it won't last long; but the fuel rods in the nuclear power plant are already enough to burn for a year and a half.

This point is not shouted out of thin air. A wargame by the US think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in August 2025 pointed out that "energy is the most vulnerable link in Taiwan's resilience," and estimated that under a blockade scenario, natural gas would last about ten days, and electricity would collapse to only 20%, thus recommending extending nuclear power service⁴⁷. Minister of Economic Affairs Guo Zhi-hui also said in the Legislative Yuan that energy security is a "national security issue, cannot be discussed too detailedly"⁴⁸.

But the anti-nuclear camp has two rebuttals to the "nuclear power is safer" inference.

The first is Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant—it was shelled multiple times during the war, becoming a living textbook for the anti-nuclear side: nuclear power plants during war may turn from a fortress into a bomb that can be detonated at any time⁴⁹. The second point is that distributed energy is more resilient: concentrating power generation in a few large reactors is actually more easily瘫痪 (paralyzed) at once than solar and wind power distributed everywhere. Former Deputy Minister of Energy Zeng Wen-sheng responds to this anxiety from another angle, meaning the cards Taiwan holds in hand are actually more than imagined, and there is no need to bet all on nuclear power⁴⁸.

The same "energy security," pro-nuclear forces read as "so we need nuclear power more," anti-nuclear forces read as "so nuclear power is more dangerous." Once again, the same premise, two opposite conclusions.

Both Sides Say They Stand on the Side of the Future

Pulling the lens back, you will find that the whole world is reshuffling this deck, and every side in Taiwan can find examples internationally to back themselves up.

Germany completed nuclear phase-out in April 2023: the anti-nuclear side uses it to prove "advanced countries can also do without nuclear power," while the pro-nuclear side cites criticism from opposition leader Friedrich Merz, calling the phase-out a "huge mistake"—while the Green Party politician Robert Habeck, who pushed the phase-out, retorts that electricity prices still fell and carbon emissions decreased after phasing out nuclear power⁵⁰. After Japan's Fukushima accident, it was once completely shut down, and now has restarted 15 units, with nuclear power accounting for about 8.3% in 2024, targeting 20% by 2040; South Korea reversed the nuclear phase-out route under Yoon Suk-yeol, calling for nuclear power to account for 34.6% by 2036⁵¹.

The most frequently cited by both sides is Finland's Onkalo—a high-level nuclear waste final disposal repository dug into 1.9-billion-year-old granite, 430 meters deep. The pro-nuclear side says "look, nuclear waste has a solution"; the anti-nuclear side says "that is Finland's stable ancient landmass, Taiwan is an active orogenic belt moving every day, cannot learn from it." To supplement, Onkalo is still in the license review stage, and the outside world often mistakenly thinks it is already officially operating⁵².

📝 Curator's Note

Putting these international cases together, you see something interesting: every case is simultaneously evidence for both sides. The same Germany, the same Finland, the same set of numbers, both anti-nuclear and pro-nuclear can use them to prove themselves right. No one is lying—both sides of this debate are actually answering two different questions. The pro-nuclear side asks: "In the present of warming and gas cutoff, what options do we have to stabilize power supply and reduce carbon?" The anti-nuclear side asks: "Do we have the right to create a waste that needs guarding for 100,000 years, when we haven't even found a site for fifty years from now?" One is "current energy security," the other is "eternal intergenerational responsibility." Both questions are true, and neither should be suppressed by the other. Taiwan has had no consensus for forty years, not because one side is stupider or worse, but because both sides fear a different kind of overwhelming risk—one side fears nuclear disasters and ten-thousand-year nuclear waste, the other side fears power shortages, gas cutoffs, and warming. When what you fear is different, you will never agree on the other's priority.

So this debate probably will not "end."

It will continue to return, round by round, in the forms of referendums, legislative amendments, submissions, and streets. The 4.34 million "yes" votes in 2025 that failed to cross the threshold, and Lanyu's "we will not take a single penny," will remain in this island's memory together, neither side can convince the other.

Next time someone asks you "whether Taiwan supports nuclear power," perhaps the most honest answer is: whether Taiwan supports nuclear power depends on which Taiwan you ask—is it the tech industry boss who is so afraid of power shortages that he can't sleep, the anti-nuclear generation that remembers Fukushima and Gongliao, the young people with no nuclear disaster memory who only fear the earth getting hotter, or the small island that has guarded nuclear waste for the whole island for forty years, yet was never asked if it was willing? Forty years and three referendums cast, the ground has hardly moved. Because this question never had a standard answer. It asks: how does a society together decide on something—nuclear waste needs to be stable for 100,000 years, carbon reduction must be rushed within ten years, power shortages are happening now—three clocks moving at completely different speeds.

And both sides say they stand on the side of the future.

Further Reading

• Taiwan's Climate Crisis and Net Zero Transition — The other side of the same energy issue: starting from physical limits, power supply and demand, and carbon reduction timelines, it is a sister piece to this article.
• History of Taiwan's Environmental Movement — Anti-nuclear as a part of Taiwan's post-war environmental movement, from the Lugang anti-DuPont to Gongliao's complete context.
• Environmental Justice and NIMBY Controversies in Taiwan — The NIMBY structure behind nuclear waste and Lanyu: why risk always falls on those with the least voice.
• Social Movements and Civic Participation — How anti-nuclear shares the same language and energy with Taiwan's democratic movement.
• Sunflower Student Movement — Civic mobilization of the same generation, understanding the era atmosphere of Lin Yi-hsiung's fast years.

Image Sources

• Hero / 2013 Anti-Nuclear Surrounding Legislative Yuan: Anti-nuclear protest, Legislative Yuan (VOA), provided by Voice of America, Public Domain. (Wikimedia filename follows the uploader's naming, actual content is the April 2013 anti-nuclear march scene.)
• Nuclear Power Plant No. 4 (Longmen): 2023 Longmen Nuclear Power Plant, photography by Taiwankengo, CC BY-SA 4.0.
• Nuclear Power Plant No. 3 (Maanshan) Nanwan: Maanshan Nuclear Power Plant, Nanwan, photography by M. Weitzel, CC BY-SA 3.0.
• Traditional Tao Underground Houses on Lanyu: Entrance of a traditional underground house of Tao people on Orchid Island, photography by othree, CC BY 2.0. The image shows Tao underground house settlements, used to present Lanyu's environmental justice context, not the low-level nuclear waste storage site itself.

References