Taiwan May Reactivate Nuclear Plants in Event of China Blockade: Official

Rescuers in protective equipments walk past a mock collapsed nuclear power plant during a civilian drill while imitating a Chinese attack in Taichung, Taiwan, on April 13, 2023. Sam Yeh/AFP via Getty Images

Taiwan plans to preserve its idle nuclear power plants in order to ensure their readiness for reactivation in case of an emergency, including a potential naval blockade by China, a lawmaker said on May 28.

Vice President Lai Ching-te was responding to a question posed during the National Taiwan University forum about how the self-ruled island would react if cross-strait tensions obstructed its natural gas imports, Taiwan News reported.

“Under such circumstances, relevant offices are planning how to maintain plants that have already been shut down for possible future use if it becomes necessary in an emergency,” said Lai, the ruling Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) presidential candidate.

Commenting on Lai’s remarks, DPP spokesman Chang Chih-hao said the government remains committed to achieving a “nuclear-free homeland“ and will continue to expand the country’s renewable energy sources.

The DPP aims to phase out nuclear power generation by 2025. Taiwan seeks to achieve an energy mix of 20 percent renewable sources, 30 percent coal, and 50 percent natural gas.

According to the World Nuclear Association, Taiwan imports 98 percent of its energy and has two operable nuclear power reactors at the Maanshan plant. It stated that Taiwan experienced widespread power cuts in 2017, 2021, and 2022.

In March last year, Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen vowed to scrutinize infrastructure and improve the country’s grid reliability after a widespread outage left more than 5 million people without electricity.

Naval Blockade

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regards Taiwan as a renegade province that must be united with mainland China by any means necessary, even as Taiwan has been a self-governing democracy.

China staged war games around the island after then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in August last year, firing missiles over Taiwan and declaring no-fly zones in a simulation of how it would seek to cut Taiwan off in a war.

A missile is launched from an unspecified location in China on Aug. 4, 2022. The Chinese military fired missiles into waters near Taiwan as part of its planned exercises on Aug. 4. CCTV via AP

Vice Adm. Karl Thomas, commander of the U.S. Seventh Fleet, said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal in September last year that China has “a very large navy” that can “bully and put ships around Taiwan.”

Thomas could not predict whether the Chinese regime would blockade or launch a full-fledged attack against Taiwan, but he said the U.S. Navy is prepared for any scenario.

“Clearly, if they do something that’s non-kinetic, which, you know, a blockade is less kinetic, then that allows the international community to weigh in and to work together on how we’re going to solve that challenge,” he said.

Beijing also staged a three-day military drill around Taiwan in response to Tsai’s meeting with U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) in California last month, sending a record of 91 warplanes and 12 naval vessels toward the island on the final day of its drills.

Greg Copley, president of the International Strategic Studies Association, said the escalating rhetoric and exercises demonstrated that the Chinese regime was unwilling to initiate a “hot” war, but was instead preparing forceful measures short of war to coerce Taiwan.

“I think one of the things the war games showed us was not that they were preparing an imminent physical invasion of Taiwan, but rather they were looking at methods short of a physical invasion,” he said in an interview with NTD, the sister media outlet of The Epoch Times.

“In other words, a quarantining of all trade into and out of Taiwan by being able to blockade ocean and air links and the like,” Copley added.

Andrew Thornebrooke and Reuters contributed to this report.