An Analysis of Taiwan's Quest to Build a Nuclear Society

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AN ANALYSIS OF TAIWAN’S QUEST TO BUILD

A NUCLEAR SOCIETY AS A STRATEGY

TO ADDRESS ISSUES OF

STATE LEGITIMACY

Yeng-Chieh Tsai

A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the University of Delaware in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Energy and Environmental Policy

Summer 2017

AN ANALYSIS OF TAIWAN’S QUEST TO BUILD

A NUCLEAR SOCIETY AS A STRATEGY

TO ADDRESS ISSUES OF

STATE LEGITIMACY

Yeng-Chieh Tsai

Approved: ______John Byrne, Ph.D. Professor in charge of the dissertation on behalf of Advisory Committee

Approved: ______S. Ismat Shah, Ph.D. Interim Director of the Energy and Environmental Policy Program

Approved: ______Babatunde Ogunnaike, Ph.D. Interim Dean of the College of Engineering

Approved: ______Ann L. Ardis, Ph.D. Senior Vice Provost for Graduate and Professional Education I certify that I have read this dissertation and that in my opinion it meets the academic and professional standard required by the University as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Signed: ______John Byrne, Ph.D. Professor in charge of dissertation

I certify that I have read this dissertation and that in my opinion it meets the academic and professional standard required by the University as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Signed: ______Young-Doo Wang, Ph.D. Member of dissertation committee

Signed: ______Shih-Jung Hsu, Ph.D. Member of dissertation committee

Signed: ______M.V. Ramana, Ph.D. Member of dissertation committee ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

It was a great experience for me to enrich and broaden my perspectives in energy and environmental study at the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy (CEEP). I was benefited from the excellent and inspiring lectures and discussions in the classes, and discussions with CEEP colleagues. I am so happy to join CEEP, a cultural and scholarly diverse, as well as friendly, community. In particular, I would like to thank my committee for their guidance and insightful comments for this dissertation. Most of all, I am deeply grateful to Prof. John Byrne for his invaluable advices and encouragement throughout my research. With his patience, experiences and knowledge, he helped me out of many straits in my academic journey. His teaching and counsel were essential to the development of my conceptual framework. I also want to thank Prof. Shih-jung Hsu and Prof. Hsin-hsun Huang. Without them, I would not even know CEEP. It is their concern and enthusiasm about society and environment that encourage me to join to this research field. Their suggestions and support are indispensable to the accomplishment of my dissertation. My heartfelt appreciation also goes out to Prof. M.V. Ramana. This research owes a debt to his insights and suggestions. Last but not least, I am very thankful to Prof. Young-Doo Wang for championing CEEP’s interest in international research. His suggestions on the methodology of the dissertation are invaluable.

In addition to the committee, there are many friends and colleagues in CEEP who have to be acknowledged for their warm friendship and support making this dissertation possible. First of all, I would like to express my deep gratitude to my Taiwanese friends at UD, Oliver Hsu, Michelle Liu, Katty Chen, and Hsin-hsun Huang. Without them, I can never come to this stage. Many thanks are also due to many of my

iv colleagues at CEEP, Job Taminiau, Jeongseok Seo, and Joohee Lee, for their friendship and intellectual encouragement.

I would also like to thank Prof. Kathleen Saul for editing my writing. Prof. Saul did not merely facilitate me to meet the academic requirement, a great constraint to a foreign student like me; I also learned so much from her. Special gratitude is also extended to Prof. Hwong-wen Ma at the National Taiwan University. He helped me to overcome many difficulties and inconvenience in collecting documents and related information by allowing me to join his research team. Finally, I wish to offer my sincere thanks to my family for their support, trust and encouragement for all these years. They have always been the source of my strength and courage in my life.

Dedicated to my parents, Kung-sung Tsai and Li-li Chen

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF TABLES ...... ix LIST OF FIGURES ...... x LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ...... xi ABSTRACT ...... xii

Chapter

1 INTRODUCTION ...... 1

1.1 Legitimation Crisis and the Birth of Taiwan’s Nuclear Power Strategy ... 3 1.2 Overview of Nuclear Power Development in Taiwan ...... 5 1.3 The Modern State and Risk: A Theoretical Overview...... 6

1.3.1 The Ideology of Progress and Nuclear Power ...... 9 1.3.2 Taiwan’s Legitimacy Problem and Nuclear Risk Society ...... 12

1.4 Analytical Framework ...... 14 1.5 Research Mehods ...... 18 1.6 Outline of Chapters ...... 18

2 ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK ...... 21

2.1 The Legitimacy of Taiwan’s Political Authority and Nuclear Power ..... 26

2.1.1 The Empiricist Approach to Legitimacy ...... 26 2.1.2 The Normative Approach to Legitimacy ...... 28

2.2 Habermasian Analysis of Modern Legitimacy ...... 32

2.2.1 The Crises in the Modern State...... 33 2.2.2 ‘Systemically Distorted Communication’ in the Modern State ... 36

2.3 Risk Society and the Legitimacy Problem ...... 42

2.3.1 Risk Society ...... 44 2.3.2 Risk Society and State Legitimacy ...... 47

2.4 Analytical Framework for Analyzing Taiwan’s Legitimacy Problem and Pursuit of Nuclear Power ...... 55

3 THE DEVELOPMENT OF NUCLEAR POWER IN TAIWAN ...... 62

3.1 Introduction ...... 62 3.2 Legitimacy Problem and the Birth of Nuclear Power in Taiwan ...... 63 3.3 Nuclear Politics in Taiwan: From 1979 to 2014 ...... 67

3.3.1 Nuclear Politics in Taiwan (1979-1987) ...... 68 3.3.2 Nuclear Politics in Taiwan (1988-2008) ...... 74 3.3.3 Nuclear Politics in Taiwan (2009-2014) ...... 88

3.4 Conclusion ...... 93

4 NUCLEAR ACCIDENTS IN TAIWAN ...... 101

4.1 Introduction: The Nuclear Accidents in Taiwan ...... 101 4.2 Non-Operational Nuclear Accidents in Taiwan ...... 97

4.2.1 Nuclear Waste Disposal and Indigenous Peoples ...... 97 4.2.2 Waste Metals and Radioactive Buildings ...... 105 4.2.3 Nuclear Accidents Related to the Institute of Nuclear Energy Research ...... 113

4.3 Accidents at Nuclear Power Plants ...... 115

4.3.1 Accidents at Existing Nuclear complexes: 1980s-May 2014 .... 115 4.3.2 Accidents at Existing Nuclear complexes: Mid-2014 -2016 ..... 121 4.3.3 The Unfinished Fourth Nuclear complex before May 2014l ..... 123

4.4 Conclusion ...... 126

5 THE ANTI-NUCLEAR MOVEMENT IN TAIWAN ...... 129

5.1 Introduction The Anti-nuclear Movement in Taiwan ...... 130 5.2 Taiwan’s Anti-nuclear Movement, Phase I (1987-2000) ...... 123 5.3 Taiwan’s Anti-nuclear Movement, Phase II (2001-2010) ...... 139 5.4 Taiwan’s Anti-nuclear Movement, Phase III (2011 -May 2014) ...... 147 5.5 Conclusion ...... 156

6 ANALYSIS: THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN NUCLEAR POWER AND LEGITIMACY IN TAIWAN ...... 162

6.1 Setting the Stage for this Chapter ...... 163 6.2 Three Components of Nuclear Risk Society in Taiwan...... 168

6.2.1 Faith in the Ideology of Progress ...... 169 6.2.2 Nuclear Risk is Manageable ...... 163 6.2.3 Society’s Responsibility to Secure Economic Growth ...... 176

vii 6.3 The Systematically Distorted Communication through Money and Power ...... 179 6.4 The Three Conflicts Caused by Mega-risk Related to Taiwan’s NuclearPower ...... 183

6.4.1 Irrationality of Risk Calculus ...... 184 6.4.2 Technocratic Threats to Democratic Governance ...... 188 6.4.3 Organized Irresponsibility ...... 192

6.4.3.1 The Irresponsibility toward Future Generations ...... 193 6.4.3.2 The Irresponsibility to Victims and the Environment. 194 6.4.3.3 The Clash of Risk Culture and Legitimation Crisis .... 199

6.5 The Revival of Taiwan’s Anti-nuclear Movement ...... 201

6.5.1 The ‘New’ Anti-nuclear Movement ...... 202 6.5.2 The New Anti-nuclear Movement: State Legitimacy Is Challenged by Civil Society in the Context of Global Risk ...... 204

6.6 Which ‘Path’ Explains the Taiwan Case? ...... 208 6.7 Conclusion: Recovering Public Discourses for a ‘No Nuclear’ Taiwan? ...... 216

7 CONCLUSION ...... 219

7.1 An Energy Paradigm Shift toward ‘2025 No Nuclear Homeland’? ...... 220

7.1.1 The Amendment of Electricity Act ...... 220 7.1.2 Rethinking the Energy Paradigm for Taiwan’s Future: Overcoming the Contradiction between State Legitimacy and Nuclear Power ...... 222

BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 231

viii

LIST OF TABLES

Table 2-1 Manifestations of Crisis When Reproduction Processes Are Disturbed…...41

Table 2-2 Categories of spontaneous interviews ...... 59

Table 3-1 Operating Taiwan nuclear complexes ...... 97

Table 3-2 Seats of major parties in the Legislative Yuan ...... 97

Table 3-3 Ten Major Construction Projects and Cost ...... 98

Table 3-4 Twelve Major Construction Projects and Cost ...... 98

Table 3-5 Major political events about NNP4 ...... 99

Table 4-1 Major Accidents at Existing Nuclear complexes ...... 122

Table 5-1 Major Anti-nuclear Events 1987-2014 ...... 158

Table 5-2 Local referendums on the fourth nuclear ...... 161

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 2-1 The subsystems in advanced capitalism ...... 34

Figure 2-2 Analytical Framework for analyzing the relationship between nuclear power and the legitimacy problem in Taiwan ...... 56

Figure 2-3 Path I: Legitimacy of the state is enhanced or created by the development of nuclear power...... 57

Figure 2-4 . Path II: State legitimacy is diminished or lost by the introduction of or continued reliance on nuclear power ...... 58

Figure 2-5 Path III: Nuclear power’s development is largely seen as a response to economic or energy resource factors and is indirectly affects state legitimacy...... 58

Figure 2-6 The Flow of this Research...... 61

Figure 3-1 The locations of three existing nuclear complexes and the halted fourth (Longman) nuclear complex...... 96

Figure 3-2 Map of Taiwan ...... 96

Figure 6-1 Analytical Framework ...... 166

Figure 6-2 Detailed analysis based on Path II inTaiwan’s case: State legitimacy is diminished or lost by the introduction of or continued reliance on nuclear power...... 209

Figure 6-3 The vicious cycle of the legitimation crisis and the role of nuclear power in Taiwan ...... 216

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

AEC Atomic Energy Council (of Taiwan) DPP Democratic Progressive Party GCAA Green Citizens’ Action Alliance INER Institute of Nuclear Energy Research KMT Kuomintang (the transliteration of the Chinese Nationalist Party) MLTA Mom Loves Taiwan Association NGO Non-governmental organization NRIA Nuke 4 Referendum Initiative Association NTHU National Tsing Hua University PRC People’s Republic of China ROC Republic of China (Official name of Taiwan) RST Risk Society Theory SEU Sustainable Energy Utility Taipower Taiwan Power Company TEPU Taiwan Environmental Protection Union YASA Yanliao Anti-nuclear Self-help Association

xi ABSTRACT

This research argues that nuclear power has been used in modern society to legitimate the claim of a scientific foundation for a technocratic state. In particular, this research explores how the unique, unsettled state legitimacy of Taiwan led to a response by the Kuomintang (KMT), also known as the Chinese National Party, to reclaim legitimacy through the launch of a civilian nuclear power strategy. Nuclear power was promoted by the government as a means of securing economic growth to overcome the global economic challenge. Government officials also used the promise of potential benefits that would follow from having nuclear power as precursors for personal freedom that would come from the expanding free market system. On the other hand, nuclear power negatively affected civil rights through a series of accidents and mistakes associated with the nuclear industry itself. In Taiwan, under more democratic circumstances after the mid-1990s, this contradiction would be denied by technocracy, partisan politics and the coercive influence of money and power from the political and economic systems. As a result, the fourth nuclear could be endorsed by the Legislative Yuan and justified on economic grounds until the Fukushima crisis. However, the three risk tendencies described previously—irrationality of risk calculus, technocracy, and organized irresponsibility—would propel the state to ignore civil society concerns about risky technologies, thereby enabling the revival of Taiwan’s anti-nuclear movement in the post-Fukushima era.The revival of civil society is evaluated as an important force for change in the post-Fukushima era. Conversely, the renewal of Taiwan’s anti-nuclear movement contributed to the revival of civil society, coevolving the legitimation crisis of the state and the halt of the fourth nuclear complex in 2014. Based on the analysis described in detail below, I conclude that the relationship between nuclear power and the

xii legitimacy problem in Taiwan was a complex dynamic process of political, economic, cultural, environmental, and social conflicts, rather than a one-dimensional technical or economic problem.

xiii Chapter 1

INTRODUCTION

Our children will enjoy in their homes electrical energy too cheap to meter [...] It is not too much to expect that our children will know of great periodic regional famines in the world only as matters of history, will travel effortlessly over the seas and under them and through the air with a minimum of danger and at great speeds, and will experience a lifespan far longer than ours, as disease yields and man comes to understand what causes him to age.

Lewis Strauss, Chairman of the United States Atomic Energy Commission. New York Times, September 17, 1954

The construction of the fourth nuclear complex [IN Taiwan] is the touchstone of authority of the government […] it should have been discussed in terms of rationality and technology. Unfortunately, it has turned into a political issue.

Prime Minister of Taiwan, Lien Chan. China Times June 16, 1994.

Japan will not restart closed-down nuclear complexes "unless safety is restored 100 percent1.

Prime Minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe, Reuters, Sep 22, 2014.

This research argues that nuclear power has been used in modern society to legitimate the claim of a scientific foundation for a technocratic state. I offer a theory that argues the opposite: namely, that nuclear power has created a legitimacy crisis in society.

This research seeks to demonstrate this contradiction in the specific context of Taiwan.

I investigate the contradiction caused by the claim of legitimacy by Taiwan because of its development of nuclear power.2 Although past studies have produced fruitful analyses of legitimacy challenges (Amsden, 1985; Gold, 1986; Simon and Kau,

1 By the end of November 2016, 25 reactors (total 42) in Japan had submitted applications for restart. So far, only 3 reactors are connected to grid Japan has completed reactors. The status of the 39 remaining reactors are non-operational at this time (World Nuclear Association, 2016a). 2 In this research, I define nuclear risk as all kinds of risk derived from nuclear power, such as nuclear waste, nuclear proliferation, accidents, nuclear terrorism, and so on.

1 1992; Wang, 1993a, 1993b, 1996; Taiwan Association of University Professors, 2009; Hsiao and Ho, 2010; Wakabayashi, 2014), the use of nuclear power as a tool to enhance state claims of legitimacy has not received the attention it deserves. In particular, this research explores how the unique, unsettled state legitimacy of Taiwan (Crawford, 2006) led to a response by the Kuomintang (KMT), also known as the Chinese National Party, to reclaim legitimacy through the launch of a civilian nuclear power strategy. Taiwan’s leaders spoke directly to its citizens in making the case for legitimacy because of its development of nuclear power. In particular, the KMT leaders suggested nuclear power can be a superior energy source for the pursuit of further economic growth and abundance of Taiwan, (Economic Daily News, 1972, April 23). Especially, the KMT government launched the Ten Major Construction Projects in the end of 1973, a few months after the oil embargo (1973 oil crisis). The KMT had worried that importing conventional energy resources might be disrupted by mainland China under the global oil crisis.3 Nuclear power thus was regarded as a superior energy source for Taiwan’s economic development because it relied on the United States, which was not likely to disrupt Taiwan’s energy security thanks to the Cold War (Hu, 1995). In 1974, the KMT government declared to build a nuclear power based advanced economy in the future (“Nuclear energy will be the primary power supply in the long term”, United Daily News, 1974, July 10), and claimed that the government will utilize Plutonium, a kind of

‘unlimited’ fuel source for nuclear power (Economic Daily News, 1974, July 18).4

The first nuclear complex was advertised a hallmark of modernity and was listed as one of the Ten Major Construction Projects,5 part of the President Chiang Kai- shek’s “New China” proposal (quoted in Chang, 1974). And Taiwan’s future was

3 In the 1970s, 71% of Taiwan’s energy resources was imported. In 2015, the number increased to 97% (Bureau of Energy, 2016). 4 Eventually, Taiwan’s three nuclear power complexes have used Uranium as a fuel source. 5 The second and third nuclear complexs were listed in 1978 Twelve Major Construction Projects.

2 idealized in the “four principles” as a way of life based on advanced technology, and a modern economy.6 In brief, leaders pleaded with citizens to remain in Taiwan as the country built a fast growing nuclear powered advanced economy (Chang, 1974). Eventually, the KMT stated the world community would recognize the error of national revocation and Taiwan would return to the United Nations system.7

The aim of this research is to analyze the relationship between nuclear power and state legitimacy in Taiwan. Questions addressed in this research include:

(1). Did nuclear power contribute to state legitimacy of the Taiwan? Or did it exacerbate the society’s problem of legitimacy?

(2). Did nuclear power contribute positively to Taiwan’s effort to portray itself as a modern, progressive society? Or did it convert the country into a ‘risk society’

(Beck, 1992a), leading it to endanger its own people and environment?

1.1 Legitimation Crisis and the Birth of Taiwan’s Nuclear Power Strategy Taiwan has the reputation of being among the world’s most economically successful developing countries, following the rapid development and political transformation that occurred during the 1970s and 1980s (Vogel, 1991; Roy, 2003). However, Taiwanese government suffered a legitimation crisis in 1971 when the United

Nations (U.N.) revoked Taiwan’s membership (see Chapter 3).This crisis was compounded by the world oil crisis in 1973. This double crisis triggered many power elites leaving Taiwan, including government officials, some of whom even deserted their

6 The four principles were: “Loyal to the state”, “act calmly”, “step by step”, and “never give up”. The four principles were used to encourage the public to build the ‘New China’. See note 5. 7 Several leaders anticipated a scenario which mainland China would peacefully join the Republic of China (Taiwan’s proposed official name) because of its superior economy (Chen, 2011: 14).

3 positions then fled to the United Sates. Several business leaders also abandoned island during the crisis. Many worried about a possible invasion by mainland China after several western countries ended diplomatic relations with Taiwan (Ko, 1981). From 1971 to 1980, the number of Taiwanese emigrants to the United States was triple that of the previous decade (Long and Huang, 2002). Needless to say, many Taiwanese who could not afford to leave were troubled by this insecure situation and some political protests emerged under martial law.

Political and economic elites responded in many ways to this crisis. One interesting response involved nuclear power which was used by the state as a means of hopefully reestablishing its legitimacy. The idea was to present Taiwan as a modern society which could introduce nuclear power— the most sophisticated energy technology in the world— to power the island to become an advanced economy.

The launch of the nuclear power era was hailed by the government as an indicator of Taiwan’s technological expertise and progress. Events over the past 30 years suggest a contradiction. On the one hand, Taiwan claims to be modern by using nuclear power to support its economic growth, but the society has also suffered numerous nuclear problems, the persistence of which calls into question the efficacy of the government’s claim. Thus, the Control Yuan8 has continuously found numerous mistakes and errors since the 1990s, which risked human life and caused environmental catastrophes, including the discovery of steel made with radioactive waste (from nuclear industry), which was used in the construction of buildings in Taiwan, and some accidents at a nuclear research institute caused radioactive contamination in a water supply for millions

8 The Control Yuan is an investigatory agency in Taiwan, similar to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) in the United States. The Control Yuan has the power to impeach officials, excepting the President and Vice President, and to provide suggestions of corrective measures to correct issues of neglect or malfunction in the government.

4 of people in north Taiwan according to Wang (1996),9 whose report was cited by anti- nuclear activists and rejected by the KMT government (Atomic Energy Council, 1995).

1.2 Overview of Nuclear Power Development in Taiwan The construction of the first nuclear power plant began in 1971 as part of KMT’s developmental strategy (see Chapter 3). By 1985, a total of three nuclear complexes had been built in Taiwan. All nuclear complexes were listed as ‘Major

Constructions’ in KMT’s developmental programs.

At the time, the government regarded nuclear power as a safe, economical, and stable energy source.10 Along with the rise of questions surrounding the safety of nuclear power in the West after the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl accidents (Yergin, 2011: 417-420), the growth of the environmental and democratic movements in Taiwan coevolved with the rise of anti-nuclear discourse in the 1980s. In Taiwan, all nuclear power plants are owned by the state-owned Taiwan Power Company (Taipower). Indeed, ‘anti-nuclear’ is widely recognized as a major platform of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which had been illegally established in 1986 under martial law as the first opposition party to the KMT after World War II (Ho, 2004).

The political struggles regarding the legitimacy and nuclear power intertwined during the following three decades. Even after the martial law era (1949-

1987), nuclear power was continuously promoted as a solution for securing economic growth under a wave of globalization and neoliberalism. Taiwan already transformed into an export-oriented industrial country in the 1970s and highly relied upon imported energy

9 Wang published several classified official document (from whistle blowers) which were done in the 1980s and 1990s. 10 The KMT’s interest in nuclear power also stemmed from its desire to secretly develop nuclear weapons to use against China, which had already built its first atomic bomb (Hau, 2000; Chung, 2004).

5 sources. Nuclear power, with its promise of cheap electricity, appeared to serve a core need for the economy.

Although the DPP held the office of the president from 2000 to 2008, it failed to terminate the fourth nuclear complex project, because the pro-nuclear KMT and its allies, who composed the majority in the Legislative Yuan, voted to continue the construction. Onward, the DPP was inactive on nuclear power issue, while the anti- nuclear activists continued their efforts in the public sphere, especially after the 2011 Fukushima crisis. In 2014, the Sunflower Movement heavily hampered the legitimacy of the KMT. Suffering this political crisis, the KMT was forced to halt the fourth nuclear project and comply with the DPP’s ‘zero nuclear homeland’ proposal, which plans to end nuclear power in Taiwan by 2025.

In section 1.3, I briefly review the relationship between the modern state, risk, and progress. I also review the ideology of progress that supports nuclear power and defines its use a as key development in the march to modernity. The Taiwan state had to craft a relationship between legitimacy and risk if it was to restore at least in the minds of the island’s population, its standing as a country. It did so by relying on an ideology of progress as the binding agent between legitimacy and risk. The section below offers a general view of the connections among legitimacy, risk, and ideology that a state would have to negotiate once its legitimacy was jeopardized.

1.3 The Modern State and Risk: A Theoretical Overview In modern society, nation states have faced various challenges due to economic, environmental, and social risks. From housing bubbles, pollutions, to unemployment (Noble, 1983). Generally, the modern state promotes technology to resolve social problems (e.g. promoting genetically modified organisms (GMOs) to

6 secure food supplies) and thus justify its legitimacy. The state seeks to secure basic human rights via technology and economic progress, hoping that this will convince the people to pledge their loyalty to the state and maintain their faith in representative democracy (Offe, 1984, 1986; O’Connor, 1987; Patel, 2008). It is regarded as common sense today that modern states should seek technological solutions to societal problems (Ellul, 1980; Muller, 2012). For example, ‘Moore’s Law’ of computer hardware, which states that humankind ‘must’ live in a world with an infinitely increasing number of transistors in a dense computer circuit, is widely taken as an inevitable or ‘natural’ law which leads human beings toward a rich society.

The effects of Moore’s Law are especially evident in information technology (IT), which has provided nearly all the productivity growth in the US economy over the last 40 years. IT has also powered a wave of globalization that has brought two billion people around the world out of material poverty (Swansan, 2015: 1).

Following the logic of this kind of ‘natural’ law, a good state must promote technological innovations and professional scientific solutions to social problems, instead of relying on political rhetoric (Ellul, 1980).

In The Technological System (1980), Jacques Ellul explains that modern bureaucracy is equipped with more and more complex machines and must itself function like a machine. The ideal administration should run like a clock, a feat only possible through the deployment of efficient technologies. In addition, modern society becomes a consumer society, which cannot function without technologies of advertising and mass production11. The progress of technology has expressed itself in the three distinctive ways (Giddens, 1990, 1999): extreme rapidity of exchange (i.e. internet and electronic

11 In the Soviet bloc, although the market economy was dismissed, faith in technology and mass production was the same as in western industrial countries.

7 commerce), vast extensiveness of change (globalization), and the intrinsic nature of modern institutions (i.e. nation states): modern forms are not found in prior historical or only have a specious continuity with pre-existing social orders. In this regard, modernity represents a discontinuous break from the past. In addition, with the coming of the nation state and the age of total war, the technology of modern war must be able to inflict mass casualties more and more efficiently, in order to neutralize enemies as soon as possible.

Born as a weapon of mass destruction during World War II (WWII), nuclear energy, a symbol of modernity, was expected to deliver vast public benefits in many industrial countries (Mumford, 1970; Byrne and Rich, 1986). The United States., France, the Soviet Union, and the U.K. all created a nuclear industry after WWII to develop what is regarded by many to be the most scientific and progressive technology, and took on nuclear risk as the price of being modern (Gaddis, 1999; Yergin, 2011; Sovacool and

Valentine, 2012). However, in the decades that followed, modern states have had come to grips with some of the realities of nuclear risks. On March 11, 2011, one of the most powerful earthquakes recorded in Japan and the following tsunami wave struck the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station on the east coast of Japan. External power supplies to the station were knocked out. The massive tsunami flooded the power station, including its backup generators, disabling the cooling water system of the reactors. In the next few days, high pressure and high temperatures melted fuel in the reactors and led to a hydrogen explosion that damaged the station and released radiation and radioactive debris (Yergin, 2011: 458-459). The Fukushima disaster was ranked a level 7 nuclear disaster along with the Chernobyl nuclear disaster of 1986. The radioactive materials released into the air and ocean aroused panic in neighboring countries, including Taiwan.

8 In the aftermath of the Fukushima crisis, the Japanese government terminated the commercial operation of the nuclear reactors for a few years, but reopened part of the nuclear power sector in 2015 to offset expensive energy imports (“Nuclear Power in Japan”, 2016). In addition to Japan, the energy roadmaps of many countries, including Taiwan, India, South Korea, and China, still include nuclear power. Nuclear energy, with its immense capacity to produce electricity in an (arguably) environmentally benign way, has been one of the most attractive technologies for the modern state in spite of mega-risks, such as Fukushima crisis. Hence, the fundamental question in nuclear politics is: What provides the ideological support for nuclear power? The idea of progress that originated in the 18th century could be the answer.

1.3.1 The Ideology of Progress and Nuclear Power In 1750, Turgot published the first complete statement of the idea of progress, A Philosophical Review of the Successive Advances of the Human Mind, in which he not only defines progress as penetrating the whole culture, but also proposes the idea of the mechanical society, in which people follow nature orders or impersonal laws. Following Turgot was Condorcet, a young successful scientist who shifted his interest to the political sphere after Turgot appointed him to the position of Inspector General in 1774. Condorcet believed that human affairs could be calculated like physical phenomena. In his view, “history was a science to foresee the progression of the human species” (quoted in Kumar, 1978, pp.23). Condorcet also suggested that it is the duty of every enlightened being to promote the tide of progress, and scientists are the people who should guide and shape the new world. Condorcet’s successor, Saint-Simon, is widely regarded as the most zealous advocate of progress. Saint-Simon clearly views the 19th century as an industrial age, ruled by scientists, industrialists, and artists through the ideology of science, or positivism. Following abstract shows the core spirit of Saint- Simon’s thought, for which he was accused of having incited to murder (quoted in

9 Gordon, 2003: 278-279).

“Let us suppose that France suddenly loses fifty of her first-class doctors, fifty first-class chemists, fifty first-class physiologists, fifty first-class bankers, two hundred of her best merchants,… the nation will degenerate into a mere soulless body and fall into a state of despicable weakness in the eyes of rival nations, and will remain in this subordinate position so long as the loss remains and their places are vacant …Let us take another supposition. Imagine that France retains all her men of genius, whether in the arts and sciences or in the crafts and industries, but has the misfortune to lose on the same day the king’s brother, the Duke of Angoulême, and all the other members of the royal family; all the great officers of the Crown; all ministers of state,[…]all the masters of requests; all the marshals, cardinals, archbishops, bishops.... But the loss of a hundred and thirty thousand of the best-reputed individuals in the State would give rise to sorrow of a purely sentimental kind. It would not cause the community the least inconvenience”

Although Saint-Simon himself rejected the concept of the free market, in the following decades the combination of industrial domination and free market created a powerful ideological weapon. After all, if the division of labor, technological innovation, and the free market are viewed as ‘natural laws’ or an ‘unconscious self-organisation’ (Hayek, 1988: 9) to efficiently increase the wealth of society, the only thing humankind has to do to achieve this utopia is to remove the manmade impediments to progress, such as social welfare or environmental regulations.

In modern society, more and more people place a remarkable confidence in science, technology, and the idea that human society can be analyzed and endlessly improved through the scientific method to discover the “ultimate natural laws of its movement” (Marx, Capital I, Preface, 1976; Noble, 1983). This belief in progress turned into dogma and promised a utopia future. Lewis Mumford describes the classical concept of progress:

“…man was climbing steadily out of the mire of superstition, ignorance, savagery, into a world that was to become ever more polished, human, and rational…In the nature of progress, the world would go on forever and forever in the same direction…and above all, much more rich” (Mumford, 1934: 182).

Progress became one of the ideological pillars of modern society, which relies on unlimited mass production. Progress not only provides the pathway for affluence, but also turns into the highest moral standard. For example, the Soviet leader Gorbachev realized that the source of legitimation crisis of the Soviet Union was the country’s poor productivity in commodities and foods rather than the military threat from the United States (Hoffman, 2009: 179-187). In addition, instrumental rationality, characterized by indifference to values and precise calculations, has become a pivotal virtue in the modern world (Habermas, 1970: 81-122).

According to Byrne and Rich (1986), power plants are an ideal vehicle to promote an ideology of progress. They are ‘abundant energy machines’, which can persuade modernity that endless economic growth is a real, practical objective. Nuclear power plants are touted as the most advanced machines of rational calculation. With its promise of cheap electricity, nuclear power embodies ideals of continuous economic growth and industrialization. Most important, the pursuit of nuclear energy machines is rooted in the belief that increased energy consumption is an indication of social progress.

At the first major United Nations-sponsored meeting in Geneva in 1955, Homi J. Bhabha, an Indian physicist, stated (quoted in Ramana, 2016):

“[T]he absolute necessity of finding some new sources of energy, if the light of our civilization is not to be extinguished, because we have burnt our fuel reserves. It is in this context that we turn to atomic energy for a solution… For the full industrialisation of the under-developed countries,

11 for the continuation of our civilization and its further development, atomic energy is not merely an aid; it is an absolute necessity.”

Moreover, nuclear power is the classic symbol of modernity because it underscores the ‘progressive image’ that underlies the legitimacy of the modern state. As Byrne and Hoffman (1988) point out, in fact there was no energy or economic need for nuclear power plants in the United States during the post-war era. The United States developed nuclear power not to solve social or energy problems, but for the sake of technological progress. “The technical esthete counterposes the life of misery, hunger, disease, and despair of the pre-technological era to present life of abundance, leisure, comfort, and freedom” (Byrne and Hoffman, 1988: 665). Needless to say, the commitment of nuclear modernism is not exclusive to western countries. Next, I describe Taiwan’s legitimacy problem and nuclear development.

1.3.2 Taiwan’s Legitimacy Problem and Nuclear Risk Society

Taiwan’s nuclear policy exploited the ideology of the progress in order to justify the legitimacy of the state as follows. First, nuclear power was used by the power elites to strengthen Taiwan’s existing political-economic structure under the pretext of strengthening the country’s national prestige and economic security (Fang, 1991; Hu, 1995; Ho, 2015). Especially the oil crisis of 1973 forced the government to prioritize economic growth instead and nuclear power became integrated into a developmental strategy that involved the creation of energy-intensive industries (see Chapter 3).

Consequently, nuclear specialists and Taipower, the only utility on the island, gained more control over national energy policies (Fang, 1991; Chen, 2013; Liu, 2013). As Mumford points out, in order to harness nuclear power, a kind of ‘mega-machine’ organization, which incorporates academic, commercial, and governmental institutions, had to be fully developed. Additionally, this mega-machine must “work on a scale never attempted before” (Mumford, 1970, pp.188). For example, nuclear power can only

12 accomplish mega-production by taking on mega-risk at the same time. Second, a mega- machine, as a complex of specialized scientific-technical knowledge, must rely on a highly centralized bureaucratic institution to support it (Mumford, 1964). Finally, modern mega-machines reflect the dogma of progress—unlimited production and wealth (Mumford, 1970: 330-331). A mega-machine must not only ‘do things big’, but also must justify itself through social organizations and ideologies. Overtime, through the development-oriented strategy, technocratic ideology allowed nuclear specialists to gain more power in national policy decisions and justify the nuclear industry.12

The development of nuclear power not only promises to generate an energy supply capable of securing economic growth, it also functions as a cultural symbol to win the favor of the society, even though Taiwan’s first nuclear power plant did not begin operation until 1978. By 1985, a total of three nuclear complexes had been built.

In Taiwan, although the fourth nuclear complex project endured criticism on both economic and technical grounds, the illusion of the ‘modern and independent state’ had become embedded in the bureaucratic politics of the project. Unlike in the United States, where many nuclear projects in the 1970s were halted on the basis of cost-benefit calculations or increasing construction delays (Jasper, 1990), Taiwan steadily developed its nuclear power industry.

After the Three Mile Island crisis in 1979, Taiwan’s anti-nuclear movement gradually grew to a scale where it could challenge nuclear power on three grounds:

12 A similar situation occurred in France. French nuclear scientists had a strong influence on nuclear power policy (Jasper, 1990; Sovacool and Valentine, 2012).

13 (1). Anti-technocracy: Due to the complexity of nuclear technology and the lack of transparency from Taipower, activists challenged nuclear power for its violation of democracy.

(2). Environmental injustice embedded in nuclear development: Due to the risks of nuclear waste and nuclear complexes themselves, activists challenged the use of nuclear power because of its potential environmental and social consequences. On a small island like Taiwan, there is no place to store nuclear waste without impacting communities. Currently, the indigenous Tao people on Orchid Island are troubled by having to deal with the consequences of living near nuclear waste without being informed at the beginning of construction of the disposal site.

(3). National insecurity as a result of nuclear power development: Fearing nuclear crises, activists challenged the conventional idea of national security, because

Taiwan, as a tiny island with high density of population and frequent earthquakes, cannot afford any nuclear crisis. Especially in the post Fukushima era, preventing Fukushima like nuclear crisis became a popular argument of activists.

1.4 Analytical Framework In advanced modern states, legitimation crises are often addressed by encouraging citizens to realize their political franchise by voting for consumption, careers, and leisure. Citizens as consumers do not question the free market system, instead they redirect their energy toward solving technical problems which can deliver economic growth. In this way, the citizen consumer substitutes economic income for governance, accepting the market replace as society’s “governor”. Rather than realizing governance goals (Habermas, 1979; Giddens, 1990). This approach was persuaded by the KMT with its developmental strategy beginning from the 1970s (see Chapter 3). The

14 process of modernization and related risks are critically examined by two important authors, Jürgen Habermas and Ulrich Beck, as outlined below.

Scientific information that flows into the political and economic systems allows decision makers to process measures preventing risks and treating real dangers (Giddens, 1981; Habermas, 1989). These measures are accepted by the administrative system as long as they strengthen the legitimacy of the state. As a result, Habermas argues, the public becomes ‘depoliticized’ since the solution of technical problems is independent of public discussion (Habermas, 1970). Furthermore, he argues that individual citizens become subsumed into a bigger institution, such as a party or trade union, which acts as a lobby, pressure group, or representation of collective interests. However, the opinions of individuals carry very little weight in these institutions relative to their leaders or experts. In the end, citizens are not involved in political decisions, and democracy and the legitimacy of the modern state are therefore eroded. In the case of the nuclear industry, Martinez and Byrne (1996) argue that this reliance on technical and scientific domination has marginalized democratic governance and has caused problems, from the arms race to unsafe waste disposal.

Habermas (1998) argues that the modern state has to secure two major normative values in order to maintain its legitimacy: popular sovereignty (with representative democracy and state legitimacy) and basic human rights (through a free market economy). In Taiwan, the former was affected by a U.N. crisis, the latter by an oil crisis. Needless to say, nuclear power policies in Taiwan were enforced through administrative power and the logic of money and were expressed in the form of technocracy. As a result, the public was ‘depoliticized’ in nuclear policies.

15 In order to rebuild the democracy and legitimacy of the modern state, Harbermas develops the idea of ‘communicative rationality’ (see Chapter 2). According to Habermas, a tendency toward legitimation crisis will persist if communicative rationality in the society is distorted by (administrative) power and money (Habermas, 1996a). As a result, people would withdraw their loyalty to the state and engage in social movements, including the anti-nuclear movement.

Building on Habermas’s critiques of modern legitimacy and technocracy, Ulrich Beck further challenges the fundamental paradox of the instrumental rationality embedded in the ideology of progress (Beck, 1992a, 1992b; Beck et al., 1994). According to Beck, instrumental rationality is based on the promised utility of risk (such as the benefits of electricity that comes from nuclear power), and the rational restriction of the side effects. However, the unseen, uncertain, and unexpected crises that derive from the side effects could be a source of unpredictable possibilities. This argument, which is not considered in the rational action paradigm (RAP, see Chapter 2), effectively questions the possibility of rational control.

This paradox forms the basis of Beck’s risk society theory. Beck argues that a “risk society is not an option which could be chosen or rejected in the course of political debate” but an “inescapable structural condition of advanced industrialization” (Beck, 1996, pp.28-31). For example, no one on earth can escape the consequences of climate change. Beck further points out that “[a] central paradox of risk is that these internal risks are generated by the process of modernization which [tries] to control them” (Beck, 2005, pp.587). For example, institutions are built to use and control nuclear power, but it is exactly these institutions that generate nuclear risk. Beck lists three basic characteristics of [mega] risks and uncertainties in the risk society (Beck, 2014: 82).

16 “De-localization: Their causes and consequences are not limited to one geographical location or space, they are in principle omnipresent.

Incalculableness: Their consequences are in principle incalculable; at bottom it is a matter of ‘hypothetical’ or ‘virtual’ risks which, not least, are based on scientifically induced not-knowing and normative dissent.

Non-compensability: The security dream of 19th century European modernity was based on the scientific utopia of making the unsafe consequences and dangers of decision ever more controllable; accidents could occur as long and because they were considered compensable. If the climate has changed irreversibly, if progress in human genetics makes irreversible interventions in human existence possible, if terrorist groups already have weapons of mass destruction available to them, then it is too late.”

Beck conceives that risks are not only manufactured by society, they might also be prevented. The political and social consequences derived from climate change provide one example where early intervention might avert the worst case scenario (Beck, 2014: 81).

“The sociological point is: if destruction and disaster are anticipated this might produce a compulsion to act. The social construction of a ‘real’ anticipation of catastrophes can become a social and political force, which transforms the world.”

To Beck, a political conflicts due to the anti-nuclear movement are related to the cultural-social crisis in a risk society. This cultural-social crisis is addressed in both Habermas’s analysis on the ‘colonization of lifeworld’ due to ‘distorted communication’ and Beck’s analysis on the clash of risk culture (see Chapter 2). Finally, after the mid-

1990s, nuclear power in Taiwan was supported by nuclear proponents as a solution to the challenge of globalization and global climate change. Furthermore, the Fukushima crisis had an immense influence on Taiwan’s nuclear discourse (see Chapter 5). I argue that Taiwan’s nuclear politics after the mid-1990s must be understood in the context of global risk, which is a key element of Beck’s thesis.

17 In summary, problems of legitimacy and mega-risk in the modern state are critically evaluated by Habermas and Beck. The former analyzes the elements for the legitimacy of the modern state; the latter provides insights into the risk commitment of the modern state. In this research, I use an analytical framework (see Chapter 2) based on key elements of Habermas’s theory of communicative action and Beck’s risk society theory. Within the historical context of Taiwan, these two theories help to analyze the relationship between the legitimacy of the state and nuclear power.

1.5 Research Methods This research adopts a qualitative approach to analyze the coevolution of nuclear risk, state legitimacy, nuclear politics, and the anti-nuclear movement in a Taiwanese context. A comprehensive literature review and documentary analysis are employed. I use material from newspapers, magazines, memoirs, books, reports from NGOs, journal articles, and government documents. In addition, I had a series of spontenous interviews during 2013- 2015 with senior members from environmental groups, scholars, and a retired officer who directly participated in early nuclear research in Taiwan.13 These experiences provided me with an in-depth understanding of the nuclear politics of Taiwan.

I analyze how nuclear power coevolved with Taiwan’s legitimacy problem and analyze the dynamic relationship and interactions between the anti-nuclear movement and major parties. I analyze the dynamic interaction between the civil society and the state in the post-Fukushima era and the emergence of a new paradigm that placed ‘civic nationalism’ as the source of political legitimacy for activists pursuing the ‘zero nuclear homeland’ energy pathway.

13 I met these people in anti-nuclear marches, speeches, or conferences and learnt their views. These were not planned interviews.

In this research, the nuclear partisan politics is divided into three phases. The first phase began in the 1970s and concluded in 1987 with the end of Taiwan Martial Law. During this period, the KMT began nuclear power projects to strengthen its legitimacy, triggering the rise of the anti-nuclear discourse. The second phase covers the years 1988 to 2011. During this period, the DPP suffered a legitimation crisis in 2001 when President Chen tried to terminate the fourth nuclear project without the permission of the Legislative Yuan. Although the passage of the Referendum Act in 2003 was greatly due to the effort of anti-nuclear groups, this law ironically triggered more partisan political conflicts unrelated to nuclear power. This period was regarded as the ‘lost decade’ of the anti-nuclear movement. The third period, from the 2011 Fukushima crisis to 2014, reflects a time when the KMT took back the presidential office and eventually halted the fourth nuclear project. During this phase, the restored authoritarian measures of the KMT triggered the revival of social movements, and the anti-nuclear movement grew in the aftermath of the Fukushima crisis along with other new social movements.

1.6 Outline of Chapters The rest of this dissertation is organized as follows:

In Chapter 2, I present the theoretical basis of this research. A more thorough analysis of legitimacy in the modern state from Habermas’s theory of communication action and Beck’s risk society theory is presented. I also provide the explanation for how these two major theories connect to Taiwan’s nuclear politics and build an analytical framework based on these two major theses.

In Chapter 3, the history of the nuclear partisan politics in Taiwan is provided. I begin with the political, economic, and social context in Taiwan in the postwar period.

19 In particular, I identify the legitimacy problem of the KMT after the U.N. crisis and the oil crisis in the early 1970s. This double crisis was a constant driving force for the KMT to stay on the conventional energy pathway and retain their commitment to nuclear power. I then detail the nuclear politics among the major parties from the 1980s onward.

In Chapter 4, I describe Taiwan’s nuclear society from the perspective of risk society. I describe nuclear accidents and risks in Taiwan from the 1970s to 2014. I end this chapter by identifying risk characteristics in Taiwan’s nuclear society.

In Chapter 5, I present the history of Taiwan’s anti-nuclear movement in three phases from 1987 to 2014. I identify the major anti-nuclear discourses and actions of each phase. I identify how activists used different strategies and discourses under different circumstances. I present how the anti-nuclear movement contributed to the revival of civil society and consequently to halt of the construction of the fourth nuclear complex after the 2011 Fukushima crisis and 2014 Sunflower Movement.

In Chapter 6 I provide the analyses of this study. Using the analytical framework I built in Chapter two, I analyze the relationship between nuclear power, state legitimacy, partisan politics, and the anti-nuclear movement.

In Chapter 7 I provide the findings and conclusion for this study. I also outline future work, which shall address Taiwan’s future energy pathway and nuclear risk, as a logical extension of this study.

Chapter 2

ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK

We can see our political institutions being robbed more and more of their democratic substance during the course of the technocratic adjustment to global market imperatives. Our capitalist democracies are about to shrink to mere façade democracies.

(Habermas, interview by M. Foessel, October 16, 2015)

There is an irony of risk and risk is ambivalence. Being at risk is the way of being and ruling in the world of modernity; being at global risk is the human condition at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

(Beck, 2014:80)

In this chapter, a framework is provided to analyze the relationship between Taiwan’s legitimacy problem and nuclear risk. As mentioned in the first chapter, the modern state is prone to use technocracy, instrumental rationality, and the ideology of progress to strengthen its legitimacy. These topics have been addressed comprehensively by the Frankfurt School from the 1930s onward.

Witnessing the disaster of World War II, the authors of the Frankfurt School14 critiqued capitalist culture, positivism, and the ideology of instrumental rationality in modern society. Two leaders of the Frankfurt School, Horkheimer and Adorno, explained that the ruling class utilizes the ideology of progress and the cultural industry to maintain social domination. For example, electrical power is regarded as an essential service in modern life, with nuclear power representing the most sophisticated means of achieving electricity service and, ultimately economic abundance. The culture

14 Frankfurt Institute for Social Research was opened in 1924 in at the Goethe University. The early authors of this school focused on critiques of modern capitalism and were influenced by Karl Marx, Max Weber, Sigmund Freud (psychoanalysis) and others.

21 extolls the value of cornucopia and technical virtuosity in order to overcome the crude character of industrial capitalism and its war-making tendencies which nearly destroyed human civilization during World War II (Byrne and Yun, 1999).

As a leader of the second generation of the Frankfurt School, Habermas maintained the Frankfurt School’s critical stance on capitalism and technocracy while utilizing the ideas of systems theory to detail the legitimation crisis in advanced modern

(welfare) states. According to Habermas, “legitimacy means a political order’s worthiness to be recognized” and “[o]nly political orders can have or lose legitimacy” (1979: 178-179). He argued that the political systems of advanced modern states face increasing difficulties in maintaining their legitimacy through formal democracy due to crises that originate in the economic system (Habermas, 1979:1-8).

Habermas recognized that the progress of rationalization in society is linked to the institutionalization of scientific and technical development (Habermas, 1970, 1973). In modern states, the government can no longer derive its legitimacy only through the ideology of free market based on the expansion of monetary value, since market expansion must bring nations into direct conflict over who owns controls the new markets. So the modern state intervenes in the exchange process through regulation in order to reduce conflict while maintaining economic growth. As a result, the traditional Marxist critique of the power structure based mainly on class struggle between capitalists and wage laborers cannot, by itself, explain contemporary political economy.

Habermas did not abandon the Marxist notions of base and superstructure. But he saw the base as the core social subsystem responsible for social integration. In his view, crisis within this core subsystem would lead to a crisis in the whole society. Habermas believed that the economic subsystem functions as the base in a capitalist

22 society. With the rise of the bourgeois class and industrialization, the (modern) nation state becomes equipped with secularization, rational law, science, technology, and sovereignty (Habermas, 1984). Both moral practice and technology come to be understood within a general perspective that requires rational justification. In this regard, the economic subsystem becomes the base in modern society because of its omnipresent commodification and rational calculation.

Although crises in the economic subsystem are a fundamental cause of destabilization in modern society, they are not necessarily experienced as economic crises. Instead, the advanced capitalist tendency toward system crisis is often experienced as a series of tensions between the particular and the universal, and the individual and society. Habermas suggested that this tension is reproduced as citizens cease to be identified as members of a particular class (e.g., bourgeois or laborer), but as members of a particular nation state. In addition, to combat and forestall crises, the state increasingly makes strategic use of cultural resources that produce meaning in daily life. For example, states often integrate traditional symbols to trigger feelings of patriotism, or even militarism, among their citizens. In Taiwan’s case, nuclear advertisements were a key vehicle creating an image of an advanced country in the 1970s-1980s (see Chapter 3).

Within a capitalist society premised on unlimited exploitation and growth, the public’s inevitable questioning of economic and political inequality can be a threat to the state’s legitimacy. A common retort by the modern state is that inequality is a consequence of the fair operations of the ‘natural law’ of the market. Hence, social integration in capitalist societies is no longer achieved through a political system of norms and values, but through system integration grounded in the economy. “Where this succeeded, the modern state took on one of the forms of social welfare state-democracy” (Habermas, 1979: 193).

Habermas goes on to explain that advanced capitalism fails to overcome the fundamental economic crisis—overproduction and the subsequent fall in the rate of profit. As a result, not only do the masses withdraw their loyalty to a political system (legitimation crisis), they also lose their faith in the ‘old worldview’ (Habermas, 1979: 49). Regarding the promise of technology in the modern economy, Habermas observed:

The variable capital that is paid out as income for reflexive labor is indirectly productively invested, as it systematically alters conditions under which surplus value can be appropriated from productive labor. Thus, it indirectly contributes to production of more surplus value […] it is an empirical question whether the new form of production of surplus value can compensate for the tendential fall in the rate of profit. (Habermas, 1979: 56)

In his later work, Habermas developed the theses of ‘systemically distorted communication’ and ‘colonization of the lifeworld’ to address the tension between

‘system’ (political and economic systems) and ‘lifeworld’, which is the background context of all processes of communication (Habermas, 2015). Through this ‘linguistic turn’, Habermas identifies ‘systemically distorted communication’ rooted in the coercion of money and power as the source of crises at the personal, social, and cultural levels of amodern society, including the legitimation crisis in which the masses withdraw their loyalty to a political system.

In Taiwan, the KMT’s legitimacy was in crisis when it lost its ‘Chinese seat’ in the U.N. in 1971. In addition, the oil crisis in 1973 further crippled the KMT’s political authority by shocking Taiwan’s growing industrial sector (see Chapter 3). This legitimacy problem greatly contributed to Taiwan’s development of nuclear power, which serves as a cultural symbol for justifying the legitimacy of the state. However, the development of nuclear power in turn triggered the anti-nuclear movement, which

24 involved political activists who challenged the KMT’s police state. It is not a coincidence that the first opposition party, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), intertwined their anti-KMT stance with anti-nuclear politics (Ho, 2005, also see Chapter 3).

For Beck, challenges to legitimacy do not merely occur in the political system, nor are they only about political order. Beck conceives the crises of the modern state as stemming from mega-risks derived from industrial society. Expert systems for managing mega-risk legitimize themselves by making appeals to instrumental rationality. Institutions are designed to control manufactured uncertainties and uncontrollability, while in effect it is the ‘organized irresponsibility’ of modern society that has generated the risk society (Beck, 1999: 99, 101). For Beck, the logic of the distribution of risk has replaced the logic of the distribution of wealth in modern society. In this regard, the legitimacy of the modern state would be in trouble if it fails to manage mega-risks. In this respect, Beck’s thesis can be regarded as an extension of Habermas’s thesis.

The rest of the chapter is arranged as follows. In section 2.1, I review the two broad legitimacy approaches of the nation state (empiricist and normative) using Habermas’s thesis, and explain how these two approaches have affinities with the development of nuclear power in Taiwan. In section 2.2, I introduce Habermas’s crises analysis which provides a comprehensive basis for analyzing the crises that coevolve with the legitimation crisis in Taiwan. In section 2.3 I introduce the core elements of

Habermas’s ‘communicative rationality’, which aims to develop a ‘real’ rational basis that is missing in empiricist and normative approaches to evaluate the legitimacy of the modern state15. I argue that communicative rationality not only serves as the

15 To Habermas, only through his communicative rationality, human beings could approach to the truth over time. In this regard, he implies his communicative rationality is a kind of ‘real’ rationality compare to instrumental rationality.

25 philosophical basis to evaluate state legitimacy, but also underpins the analysis of the crises in Taiwan’s risk society. In section 2.3, I use Beck’s risk society theory to identify the risk society in Taiwan’s context and use three perspectives in order to analyze Taiwan’s legitimacy problem from the perspective of nuclear risk. In the final section of this chapter, I build an analytical framework using the three perspectives of nuclear risk embedded in Habermas’s analytical framework.

2.1 The Legitimacy of Taiwan’s Political Authority and Nuclear Power 2.1.1 The Empiricist Approach to Legitimacy With the evolution of human society, the level of justification and worldview forward rationalization. Unlike in pre-modern or traditional societies, charismatic leaders, myths, good stories, or religious beliefs cannot justify the social organization and political economic systems of modern states (Habermas, 1976: 16-18). Particularly, in modern capitalist societies, the accepted principles of social organization create a need for a social system that supports the accumulation of monetary wealth. Thus, human beings look for calculable and predictable universal norms for establishing social identity, which are often provided by the free market and technology. And these norms are enforced by modern civil law, “the relationship of wage labor and capital, which is anchored in the system of bourgeois civil law” (Habermas, 1976: 20).

Habermas further distinguishes between administrative and communicative power, wherein administrative power is motivationally effective through coercion, and communicative power is effective only through the weak force of discursively achieved consensus (Habermas, 1996a: 136). According to Habermas, empirical (positive) law provides the channel through which communicative power is translated into administrative power, as only the law makes a claim to represent an agreement that could be adhered to by all. In other words, consensus on norms and moral principles has to be

26 translated into laws to be considered legitimate in modern societies. The validity of a legal norm means that the state is able to enforce it.

However, administrative power still requires normative support. This is why the state requires legitimation. In Taiwan’s case, many studies analyze how the KMT held legitimacy when its administrative power was endorsed by the U.N. (Tien, 1975; Amsden, 1985; Chao, 1992; Chen, 1995; Wang, 1996; Liu, 2001; Zhang, 2003). In particular, holding China’s seat in the U.N. legally allowed for the R.O.C. in Taiwan to receive immense financial aid from the U.N. to speed industrialization in the 1960s. The economic policies from the 1960s onward gradually transformed Taiwan into an export- oriented industrial country (see Chapter 3). In this regard, the KMT heavily relied on the U.N.’s empirical endorsement to justify its legitimacy.

However, in the 1970s, the crisis in the U.N. and the oil crisis resulted in a double-legitimation crisis for the KMT. When the R.O.C. was expelled from the U.N. in 1971, Taiwan’s legitimacy as a state was henceforth unacknowledged by the international community. Taiwan was excluded from many trade and financial agreements after losing its U.N. membership (Sutton, 2016). Needless to say, losing the endorsement of the U.N. made the Taiwanese public fear possible invasion from mainland China and abandonment by the Western bloc. On Habermas’s account, popular sovereignty (as a state), which has to be also endorsed by international community, is one of the two major sources of legitimate order in the modern state (Habermas, 1998). In Taiwan’s case, the U.N. crisis challenged the sovereignty of Taiwan and thus made it difficult for the KMT to justify its authoritarian rule. In this regard, the KMT’s political reform in the 1970s could be viewed as a strategy for rebuilding its domestic legitimacy (see Chapter 3).

27 Moreover, the growing industrial sector was disrupted by the 1973 oil crisis. Habermas recognized that the modern state (the administrative system) has to intervene in the economic system to justify its legitimacy (this is discussed later in this chapter). In the context of the Cold War, the KMT regulated Taiwan’s market to prove it was capable of building a rich capitalist society superior to Mao’s uncivilized, irrational communist China. The oil crisis in 1973 put the KMT’s legitimacy into a worse situation after the U.N. crisis. In response, the KMT used nuclear power as part of an effort to save its authoritarian legitimacy and restore the loyalty of the public, who were disturbed by the uncertainties of the state’s international recognition, feared a potential Chinese invasion, and were troubled by the economic impacts of the oil crisis.

Nuclear power not only served as a stable energy source to facilitate rapid industrialization following the oil crisis, it also helped the KMT to further its progressive image (see Chapters 3 and 6). By integrating nuclear power with the economic reform of the energy-intensive steel, shipbuilding, oil refinery, and hi-tech industries, the KMT managed to accomplish rapid industrialization and urbanization during the 1970s-1980s. Nuclear power was continuously used by the KMT, even after the martial law era, as a progressive symbol to justify its legitimacy from a normative perspective. In the next section, I present Habermas’s analysis on the normative approach to legitimacy.

2.1.2 The Normative Approach to Legitimacy

For Habermas, the key questions about normative legitimacy are: Why do people comply with social norms? And how are these norms formed and enforced?

Theories of normative legitimation generally state that the political order of social interactions is achieved by the willingness of actors to adhere to a set of norms founded upon shared values. For Habermas, legitimacy claims are related to normative

28 social identity from the motives of belief, no matter what the source. The motives cannot be independent from the justifications that provide grounds and reasons in a given situation (Habermas, 1979: 183).

If binding decisions are legitimate […]if they can be made independently of the concrete exercise of force and of the manifest threat of sanctions […] This unconstrained normative validity is based on the supposition that the norm could, if necessary, be justified and defended against critique. And this supposition is itself not automatic. It is the consequence of an interpretation which admits of consensus and which has a justificatory function, in other words, of a world-view which legitimizes authority (Habermas, 1976:101).

For Habermas, normative legitimation has to be based on “good reasons”:

If we agree that the legitimacy is involved in the willingness to comply with the political order, the legitimate order thus has something to do with motivations through the good reasons (Habermas, 1979: 200).

Good reasons for citizens to accept a legitimacy claim by a modern state, according to Habermas, are those that support the right to popular sovereignty, recognition of traditional human rights, and adherence to the rule of law. Human rights, in particular guarantee life and private liberty—that is, scope for the pursuit of personal life plans (Habermas, 1998). As mentioned in Chapter 1, the ideology of progress serves to legitimatize the pursuit of personal life goals in a rich utopia. In Taiwan, nuclear power has been associated with progressive norms and the development strategy begun in the 1970s after revocation of U.N. status. According to Byrne et al. (2014), nuclear power can be viewed as an ideal of the modern energy paradigm, which relies on the principle ‘more is better’ at the core of decision making. According to Byrne et al. (2009), and Mathai (2013), cornucopianism as one branch of progressive ideology embraces the idea of a social utopia, including fairness, brought about by material affluence. By separating politics from economics and focusing on economic productivity, proponents of

29 neoliberalism and modernism argue that that problems of distribution, equity, risk, and political ideology can be overcome by material abundance through ‘value free’ technologies.16

Modern organizations and institutions come to resemble each other in part because of political and economic competition, but also because they mimic one another (Sagan, 1996-1997). Mimicking occurs when organizations or even countries see successful use of images, ideals, etc. in the promotion of their counterparts’ reputations and standing. In this regard, nuclear power, just like Olympic teams that stand for national glory, can legitimize modern states: nuclear power not only satisfies economic goals, but also fulfills ideals of advanced country standing.

In Taiwan’s case, losing legal status in the U.N. pushed the KMT to rely on another source to maintain its legitimacy (especially the loyalty of the public). The plans for ‘Ten Major Construction Projects’ and later ‘Twelve Major Construction Projects’ were launched and widely promoted in the propaganda and textbooks in the mid-1970s to strengthen the progressive image of the KMT (see Chapter 3). All of the current nuclear power plants were listed as major construction projects from this early stage of the island’s effort to recover legitimacy first and foremost, from its own citizens, business executives, intellectuals, and cultural leaders.

By playing a normative ‘nuclear cornucopianism card’, the KMT belittled the democracy movement and anti-nuclear movement as irrational from the 1980s onward. Nuclear power became a handy tool for the KMT’s version of cornucopianism (Byrne and Yun, 1999). The KMT promoted nuclear power as a part of Taiwan’s economic

16 Byrne et al. (2009) and Mathai (2013) develop detailed critiques of this proposition and the reader is encouraged to review their work.

30 miracle, which was accomplished by rational one-party rule rather than ‘populist democracy’ (quoted in Yang, 2015). In 2016, Hung Hsiu-chu, before elected as chairwoman of KMT, declared that she would revive ‘Chiang ching-kou-nism’ (see Chapter 3) for KMT’s future (Shih, 2016).This hierarchy of nuclear powered economic growth over democratic justice remains present in today’s politics. Recently, before leaving the office, the KMT Prime Minister Chang San-cheng asked the DPP, “How much GDP growth can transitional justice [for redressing human right abuses during martial law era] bring to Taiwan?” (quoted in Zheng, 2016)

On the other hand, anti-KMT political activists have challenged the technocratic ideology of Taiwan. Reflected in the opposition’s slogan ‘anti–nuclear is for anti-dictatorship’ (Lin, 2014), this retort has become one of the most famous in Taiwan’s contemporary political history. In this respect, the rise of Taiwan’s anti-nuclear politics can be explained by Habermas’s thesis that recognizes technocracy and its relationship with the legitimacy of the state.

Moreover, Habermas argues that the quest for normative legitimacy must answer this question: Does a popular, legal, and technocratic authority have legitimacy? For Habermas, this is a key issue. KMT can be seen as criticizing its anti-nuclear, anti- business and anti-development of its opponents. On the other hand, the DPP and anti- nuclear activists accuse the KMT of violating basic human rights through its technocracy and dictatorial rule (see Chapter 3). This tension reflects what Habermas identifies as a conflict between modern popular sovereignty and basic human rights (Habermas, 1998), and may be sharpened due to systematically distorted official communication (see the next section).

31 Habermas has observed that many East Asian countries, including Taiwan, violated basic human rights not for normative reasons, but with a strategic intention.

This intention can be recognized insofar as the arguments are connected with the political justification of the more or less ‘soft’ authoritarianism that characterizes the dictatorships of developing nations […] These dictatorships consider themselves authorized by the ‘right to social development’ —apparently understood as a collective right—to postpone the realization of liberal rights and rights of political participation until their countries have attained a level of economic development (Habermas, 1998: 96)

In the next section, I present Habermas’ analysis on the legitimation crisis of the modern state. 2.2 Habermasian Analysis of Modern Legitimacy Building on Habermas’s analysis of crises facing the modern state (Habermas, 1976, 1996a), his theoretical framework can be seen as operating on two levels.

First, the failure of rationality in the political system, which cannot provide sufficient use-value for the public, would cause a legitimation crisis. This failure manifests itself in the the modern state, for example, society faces mega-risks associated with nuclear power, and the feelings of insecurity and panic that accompany accidents at nuclear installations.

Second, the ‘systematically distorted communication’ can likewise trigger and deepen the legitimation crisis. At this second level, Habermas develops the thesis based on his ‘communicative rationality’ concept to explain why distorted communication can contribute to a legitimation crisis.

32 2.2.1 The Crises in the Modern State In advanced capitalism, Habermas argues, surplus value and labor value cannot be determined as they were in liberal capitalism. First, state intervention serves to increase the productivity of labor power through improvements in material infrastructure, the education of the workforce, and the institution of scientific research and technical innovation. This amounts to an increase in the contribution of conceptual/intellectual labor, or what Habermas called ‘reflexive labor’. This is labor by such as scientists, engineers, teachers and others, who produce the ‘relative surplus value’ rather than the ‘absolute surplus value’ in the orthodox Marxist theory of value (Habermas, 1976:56).17 Moreover, through stronger unionization, wages are no longer determined by market principles alone, but also by political negotiation. However, Habermas does not suggest that typically the state ‘plans’ the economy, as long as markets for commodity production and consumption are significant (Habermas, 1976: 60).

The state has to intervene in the market to maintain its legitimacy. At the same time, capitalists demand that state has to leave the production of commodities to the market. This causes tension between the state, capital (in the economic system), and the public concerning the distribution of use-value in society. The middle class, as C. Wright Mills suggests, turns into a class of ‘cheerful robots’ (Mills, 1951: 233-235). The relationship between the three subsystems is shown in Figure 2-1. As the control center, the political system (divided into administrative and legal subsystems), defines social welfare to the socio-cultural system, and steers the economic system by administrative decisions. The socio-cultural system seeks public loyalty to the state, and the economic system provides monetary values to the other systems.

17 While differences in reflexive and industrial or agricultural labor are evident, it is important to note that Habermas identified commonality both are disciplined to increase productivity.

33 Figure 2-1 The subsystems in advanced capitalism (Modified from Habermas, 1976:5; Offe, 1984:52)

The political system in advanced capitalism, Habermas argues, is not merely the agent of monopolistic capitalism, but maintains the balance between capital and society by managing the economy while securing its legitimacy. If the state fails to keep this balance, a motivational crisis in the socio-cultural system emerges and the members of society can withdraw their loyalty to the political system, resulting in a legitimation crisis.

Habermas identifies four possible crises, which can afflict the modern state. I list these crises below (Habermas, 1976: 46-50).

(1). Economic crisis (the output of the economic system)

Economic crisis is derived from the tendency of falling rates of profit, over production, and the failure to fairly allocate value. These problems cannot be easily

34 resolved by the state, which also tries to follow (intentionally or not) the law of value in advanced capitalism.

(2). Rationality crisis (the output of the political system):

A rationality crisis occurs when the administrative system fails to reconcile or fulfill demands from the economic system due to the fundamental contradictions of advanced capitalism. For example, ecological limitations may force the political system to shift economic policy from laissez-faire to a more regulating form. Hence, the development of productive forces not only leads to state intervention, but can also lead to actions that contradict the logic of the capitalist economic system.

(3). Legitimation crisis (the identity crisis of the political system):

Legitimation crisis is a kind of identity crisis that can be generated by failing system integration, and by the fact that the state, as a consequence, cannot secure loyalty of the public.

(4). Motivation crisis (the identity crisis of the socio-cultural system):

The crises from the economic and political systems which fail to allocate use- value in acceptable ways results in disturbances in the socio-cultural system, which can translate into the withdrawal of legitimation. In other words, motivation crises can trigger conflicts in socio-cultural systems that undermine worldviews and plant doubts about the morality of the existing social order.

35 The increasing complexity of the economic system makes monetary calculation less and less transparent for stakeholders (e.g. the rational calculation based market system failed to prevent the 2008 financial crisis). In such instance, the state can no longer assure compliant decision-making through instrumental reason alone. In response, the state may try to strengthen its legitimacy through norms of ‘cultural meaning’, such as appeals to an ideology of progress or patriotism. In the case of India, the first nuclear test in 1974 is believed to have been undertaken to win public support rather than to respond to a real foreign threat at the time (Chengappa, 2000). The Minister of External Affairs was only given 48 hours advance notice of the test. According to Chengappa (2000), even the Defense Minister was not informed about this test and learned of it only after it was conducted.

In his later work, Habermas further argues that communication in society will be distorted and the tendency toward crises will emerge if the ‘norms’ of the political and economic systems are decoupled from the lifeworld. Here, Habermas identifies the legitimation crisis as being rooted in ‘systematically distorted communication’ that results from the interplay of money and power that are embedded in the political and economic systems in modern society. 2.2.2 ‘Systemically Distorted Communication’ in the Modern State

Habermas further elaborates the framework of the lifeworld, as the background context of all processes of communication, and social system to analyze the legitimation problem in the modern state. He proposes

“[…] that we conceive of societies simultaneously as systems and lifeworlds. This concept proves itself in [...] a theory of social evolution that separates the rationalization of the lifeworld from the growing complexity of societal systems” (Habermas, 1987:118).

36 In everyday life, people review, challenge, update, and justify their lifeworld through communicative action. In this regards, human beings are seen by Habermas to reproduce their lifeworld through processes of rationalization lifeworld and we are integrated into social evolution through communicative action (i.e. social learning). According to Habermas, the more communicative consensus can be based on mutual understanding rather than on normatively ascribed agreement or cultural tradition, the more rational the society will be.

With the evolution of society, not only is the lifeworld increasingly rationalized, but the complexity of the social systems also increases. For example, in pre- modern society, the functions of economic production and education fell to the family unit. The ritual exchange of valuable objects served the purpose of social integration (Polanyi, 1977: 47-63). In industrial society, the family is no longer the primary economic producer, and the function of education is split into various subsystems. As a result, the differentiation of the lifeworld and social system leads to the “uncoupling of system and lifeworld” (Habermas, 1987:153). The evolution of society produces more and more complicated systemic mechanisms to maintain legitimacy. The role of the lifeworld, Habermas argues, is thereby reduced, as the institutional source for mutual understanding: “[T]he more complex social systems become, the more provincial lifeworlds become. In a differentiated social system the lifeworld seems to shrink to a subsystem” (Habermas, 1987:173). As a result, democracy is eroded, especially after the rise of neoliberalism, as technocratic elites implement the imperatives of the markets and technology almost without resistance (Habermas, 2015).

‘Relief mechanisms’ are developed, which try to coordinate actors together through purposive success rather than through mutual understanding (Habermas, 1987: 181). This is a key point for Habermas. Power and money become steering mechanisms

37 that make system integration possible by organizing increasingly differentiated individuals and subsystems together in order to achieve system goals. As a result, power and money displace traditional mechanisms which foster consensus through mutual understanding. The modern mechanisms of power and money preclude participation in the discursive community by most actors (i.e. middle and lower income members increasingly become spectators as the high income/high power elites decide social direction). This inhibits the practice of communicative competence, leading to

‘systematically distorted communication’. In Taiwan’s case, Taipower and the government utilized subsidies and administrative power to proceed with nuclear projects instead of allowing the public to participate in the decision making (see Chapters 3 and 6).

Habermas provides a simple example of systematically distorted communication. A wife could have no feelings for her husband, but she deceives him by acting affectionate towards him. Or, she may deceive not only her husband but also herself through insincere speech acts. In the first case, the wife intentionally violates the presupposition of rational communication. In the latter case, both the husband and wife do not sense the distortion of the communication (Habermas, 2001a: 152).

In capitalist societies, money—precisely quantifiable, accumulated, and stored for the system of commodity production—intrudes into all aspects of social life.

Since money allows two actors to relate to each other through instrumental action, the efficacy of money implies that it does not act merely within the economic subsystem, but also regulates the relationships that exist between the economic subsystem and other subsystems. The state (leading the political system) thereby becomes increasingly dependent on the economic system, which means that power as a steering mechanism is increasingly assimilated to money.

“In the end, systemic mechanisms suppress forms of social integration even in those areas where a consensus-dependent coordination of action cannot be replaced. Hence, the symbolic reproduction of the lifeworld is at stake. In these areas, the mediatization of the lifeworld assumes the form of colonization” (Habermas, 1984: 196).

In a more democratic and open public sphere, the public would have more chances to reach mutual understanding and to approach the truth and advance actual public interests, so that the legitimacy of the political system could be better maintained.

In particular, Habermas suggests an ideology of ‘constitutional patriotism’, which can secure the legal due process for rational communication, and heighten an awareness of both the diversity and the integrity of the different forms of life coexisting in a multicultural society like Switzerland or the United States. He writes:

The original thesis stands: democratic citizenship need not be rooted in the national identity of a people. However, regardless of the diversity of different cultural forms of life, it does require that every citizen be socialized into a common political culture (Habermas, 1996a: 500).

In authoritarian society with censorship, distorted communication is heightened, leading to legitimation crises.

Habermas also argues that in the age of globalization, the legitimacy of the modern state faces vital challenges due to the rapid and immense volume of capital flows

[…]in our increasingly interdependent but still nationally fragmented world society, global financial capitalism, which has taken on a life of its own, still largely escapes the grip of politics. Behind democratic façades the political elites technocratically implement the imperatives of the markets almost without resistance. Trapped in their national perspectives, they have no other choice. Thus, they prefer to uncouple the political decision−making processes from the political public arenas, which are in any case dried out and whose infrastructure is crumbling. (Habermas, 2015, interview by M. Foessel)

For Habermas, the colonization of the lifeworld incites crises at the cultural, social, and personal levels (Table 2-1). At the personal level, individuals who suffer from coercion or abuse of money and power may have psychological problems which affect their socialization and cause them to lose faith in the norms they receive from their education. At the social level, when more and more individuals suffer from the colonization of lifeworld, they may withdraw their loyalty to the political system, causing anomie in society, or withdraw their participation in ‘normal’ social actions. At the cultural level, the colonization of the lifeworld can cause the rupture of tradition, the unsettling of collective identity, and the loss of cultural meaning. To illustrate this, I revise an example from Habermas (1987:121-123). A worker with seniority forces a newcomer to drink beer with him every morning through power or money threats rather than through rational consensus. At the cultural level, the newcomer perhaps begins to regard drinking beer as an uncomfortable habit onward. Drinking beer together may ruin team spirit (collective identity), and he may no longer regard beer as a way to socialize as team members might traditionally have thought (loss of culture meaning and rupture of tradition). At the social level, the newcomer may lose his loyalty and motivation for working in this workplace, thus creating anomie and making the work seem illegitimate. At the personal level, newcomer may feel alienated and suffer from psychological problems. All of these crises are due to distorted communication.

For Habermas, these crises triggered new social movements in the 1960s, which aimed to challenge coercion through money and power, leading to a legitimation crisis.

“These new conflicts no longer arise in areas of material reproduction; they are no longer channeled through parties and organizations; and they can no longer be alleviated by compensations that conform to the system.

40 Rather, the new conflicts arise in areas of cultural reproduction, social integration, and socialization” (Habermas, 1981:33).

Habermas views these new social movements as a process that may improve social communication for a better democracy (Habermas, 1981).

Table 2-1 Manifestations of Crisis When Reproduction Processes Are Disturbed Disturbance in the Structural Component Dimension Domain of Culture Society Person of evaluation Withdrawal Crisis in Rationality Loss of Cultural reproduction of orientation and of meaning legitimation education knowledge Unsettling of Solidarity of Social integration collective Anomie Alienation members identity Withdrawal Rupture of Personal Socialization of Psychopathologies tradition responsibility motivation Source: the table is based on materials in Habermas (1987: 143)

Regarding technology in modern society, Habermas states that the colonization of the lifeworld through money and power was accompanied by a rapid growth in technology: “Our problem then can be stated as one of the relation of technology and democracy: how can the power of technical control be brought within the range of consensus of acting and transacting citizens?” (Habermas, 1970: 57). Like Marcuse (1964), Habermas identifies the technocratic colonization of the lifeworld as a one-dimensional development of modernity. Ellul agreed on the point that modern society elevates technocratic values and reasoning above all others, even claiming that technology has the status of ‘monism’ (Ellul, 1964: 94-110). Similar to Ellul, for Habermas, modernity has succumbed to disinfected reason, and therefore the recovery of the technocratic lifeworld would depend on the repudiation of reason in this form and the embrace of ‘committed reason’ in which the ethical and moral value of thinking is

41 paramount (Habermas, 1973: 256-268). However, Habermas does not further explore the relationship of modern risk in the age of global risk, which comes with technological change in social systems, and the lifeworld. In other words, the relationship between modern risk and the legitimacy problem is missing in Habermas’s thesis.

In this regard, Beck’s thesis on risk society can be viewed as an extension of Habermas’s thesis on ‘committed reason’. Beck might ask Habermas, “Can we control modern (nuclear) risk with ‘committed reason’?”

2.3 Risk Society and the Legitimacy Problem When dealing with the paradoxes and contradictions in modern society in his risk society theory, Beck agrees with Habermas that political decisions in the modern era are based upon economic and technological rationality. According to Beck, technology is not merely a tool for manipulation or domination, but constitutes the expert system embedded in modern life. People in modern society have to trust the expert system to survive, and individuals in ‘developing’ or ‘underdeveloped’ societies encounter ‘enforced cosmopolitism’ (Beck, 2006: 338).

Combining the welfare state and market economy, modern society suggests to individuals that they are making decisions freely in advanced countries but de facto are constrained by the technical rationality underlying each subsystem (Beck, 1986; see also

Giddens, 1990). For example, today’s individuals are free to choose which clothes they would like to purchase in the marketplace (if they have the income), but most do not participate in the debates or decisions regarding economic treaties, wages and labor conditions in Asian sweatshops. Moreover, the public may have the opportunity to debate the location for storing nuclear waste, but generally are excluded from decisions regarding the future of the energy system. As C. Wright Mills noted 60 years ago “They

42 feel that they live in a time of big decisions; they know that they are not making any” (Mills, 1956: 5).

From a radical constructivist approach, modern society is too complicated and highly differentiated for individuals, especially those with limited money or power, to control their lives (Rosa, et al., 2014). Social subsystems are largely indifferent to normative rules or reason and can successfully operate whether or not they sustain human dignity, rationality, religious beliefs, and well-being. Each social subsystem is a functional unit that reduces the complexity of its environment by narrowing its subject and differentiating itself from other subsystems and questions of ethics and rationality can be rationally managed.

Partially absorbing the constructivist approach, Beck argues that the logic of the distribution of wealth is no longer the driving force in modern society. As in Japan and Germany after the Fukushima crisis, the logic of the distribution of risk has overwhelmed the logic of the distribution of wealth. In other words, modern society has become a risk society in the sense that more and more people are becoming aware that their world is at risk. “Modern society has become a risk society in the sense that it is increasingly occupied with debating, preventing and managing risks that it itself has produced” (Beck, 2006:332).

In subsections 2.3.1 and 2.3.2, I first identify Taiwan’s risk society under the context of globalization, which is integrated into Beck’s risk society theory, and I use Beck’s theory to identify the legitimacy problem from three perspectives of nuclear risk. I then summarize the five characteristics of Taiwan’s risk society to serve as the context of this research.

43 2.3.1 Risk Society

As mentioned, Habermas argues that the political system in the modern state has to intervene in the economic system guided by principles of instrumental rationality. From the perspective of risk society, the principles of instrumental rationality in the modern risk society can be expressed by the rational action paradigm (RAP) (Rosa, et al., 2014). Key elements of RAP are described below.

(1). RAP assumes that human beings seek to maximize their utility by choosing among different options. In Taiwan’s situation, under the political and oil crises in the 1970s, the government presented the expected value from nuclear power as its ability to help to secure state legitimacy and economic growth. There was no effective way for opponents to challenge this calculus.

(2). RAP has often emphasized efficiency and economic benefit as the primary social values. Other values such as environmental concerns and indigenous rights are reduced as externality issues which cannot be easily measured, and therefore, are often dropped from cost-benefit calculations thereby distorting economic assessments (Byrne, 1989; Leveque, 2015). Nuclear proponents in Taiwan recommended that society focus on tangible, measurable values and did not place much importance on

environmental or human rights (the latter was most notable in the negative impacts of nuclear power on the Tao people).

(3). RAP often finds fairness and justice issues as problematic. The fact is that residents near nuclear complexes are exposed to more risks than others, while the benefits are not equally distributed, can be ignored in

44 cost-benefit analyses. For example, locals may suffer the loss of their original economic activities, such as fishing while consumers far from the mega projects can enjoy benefit without harm (see Chapter 5). But the unequal quality of the project is seldom sufficient in the case of RAP to cancel or postpone a project. Taiwan built all nuclear complexes during the period of martial law and did not weigh inequity factors in its decisions and actions.

(4). RAP assumes that accountability should be the province of rational institutions. As presented in Chapters 3 and 4, Taiwanese officials usually justify nuclear power by citing the opinions of experts in official or academic institutions who possess ‘rational knowledge’. But who has standing in such scenario to question experts? In Taiwan’s case, the government’s actions on behalf of nuclear power did not question the

efficacy of its own experts.

Under RAP, faith in nuclear power can be traced to three factors: (1) faith in the ideology of progress, (2) belief that nuclear risk is manageable, and (3) acceptance of the view that a key of modern society is to secure economic growth. According to Byrne et al. (2006), modernity’s formula over the past 150 years had been to increase energy in order to produce continuous economic growth. And nuclear power has been heralded as a means to achieve this progress. One key reason why nuclear power has won the favor of most Taiwanese business leaders is the promise of economic growth, which is seem as more useful than wasting time debating its risks. But Ramana identifies, “The only way to justify nuclear power as a solution to rapidly growing energy demands is to envision a rapid deployment of reactors and to ignore a history of failed nuclear power projections worldwide” (2013: 72).

45 The persistent state of potential crisis in advanced capitalist economic systems, as Habermas identifies, is another driving force for a focus on progress rather than risk. This view contributed to the development of nuclear power from the 1970s onward in Taiwan (see Chapter 3). Particularly, the true cost of nuclear energy, including the treatment of nuclear waste, is seldom included in financial calculations of the political system (Jasper, 1990; Caldicott, 2006; Leveque, 2015). As a result, nuclear power has often been described as a cheap energy source to sustain modern economy.

For the sake of preserving state legitimacy, the pro-nuclear politicians in Taiwan must assure that nuclear operations are safe energy source even though such guarantees are impossible (i.e. it is impossible to recover from the aftermath of nuclear crisis, see Chapter 4). As a result, modern institutions now look like the perpetrators rather than the managers of nuclear risks. For example, after the Fukushima crisis, “the nuclear industry has tried various strategies to break down public resistance to nuclear power, including information campaigns, risk comparisons, and efforts to promote nuclear power as a solution to climate change” (Ramana, 2011a: 43).

This pattern of thinking reflects Beck’s identification of the three reactions used in response to omnipresent risk: denial, apathy, and transformation (e.g., store

Taiwan’s nuclear waste on Orchid Island, see Chapter 4). Specifically, these are expressed in increasingly individualized and disembodied citizens. The individual is forced to be cynical about the accountabilities of modern institutions but at the same time must trust modern institutions that are endorsed by expertise. This is the situation Beck calls ‘tragic individualism’ (Beck, 2009: 55).

Nuclear power itself consists of three levels of risks as Beck identifies (Beck, 2006: 334):

1. Spatial: the new risks (e.g. climate change) do not respect nation-state or any other borders; 2. Temporal: the new risks have a long latency period (e.g., nuclear waste) so that their effect over time cannot be reliably determined and limited. 3. Social: thanks to the complexity of the problems and the length of chains of effect, assignment of causes and consequences is no longer possible with any degree of reliability (e.g. financial crises).

At the spatial level, the consequences of nuclear risk are not limited to any location or space, making the risk omnipresent. At the temporal level, the risk is in not knowing what will happen: the ‘unknown unknowns’ (Beck, 2006: 335). At the social level, because the new risks are intertwined by many factors involved in global economics, their causes cannot be precisely determined and their effects are not recoverable. Therefore, the risk is incalculable.

In sum, under globalization, science, and technology, including ‘good science’ for public well-being, always includes the production of manufactured risks. This is the social context in which what Beck calls a ‘reflexive modernization’ emerges, because the consequences of radicalized modernization undermine the institutions of modernity and produce crises inside those institutions. Accordingly, three core questions about the legitimacy of Taiwan’s reflexive modernity and nuclear power are examined in this dissertation: 1. Who decides what is and what is not a risk? 2. What are the relations that sustain political success? 3.What is the relationship between state legitimacy and risks? In this research, these questions are analyzed by using Beck’s discourse on risk society (Beck, 2006, 2009), which is applied to the context of Taiwan.

2.3.2 Risk Society and State Legitimacy For Beck, legitimacy centers on the question of ‘what kind of belief in legitimacy’ justifies the legal domination of the rulers. But Beck argues that in the age of

47 globalization, the ‘translegal domination’ of corporations make its own law for capital circulation through ‘annihilation of space by time’ in the age of globalization (Harvey, 1989; Beck, 2005: 72). The characteristics of the Taiwanese ‘translegal power’ regarding nuclear power can be summarized below (Beck, 2005: 72-77).

(1). The right to decide and who may decide is not handled solely by the modern state. In the case of nuclear power, although Taipower is the power company under the supervision of Department of Economic Affairs, Taipower dominates the discourse on nuclear power for a long time, and most business leaders agreed with Taipower’s stance on nuclear power issues (see Chapters 3 and 4).

(2). The quasi-state authority of corporations allows them to make decisions and execute them without the consent of the government or the public. Following this logic, the question is no longer if something is allowed to happen, but where it will happen. In the case of nuclear power, Taipower, as a state-owned enterprise, is able to transport and store nuclear waste on Orchid Island without informing the indigenous Tao people who have lived on the island for several hundred years.

(3). ‘Translegal power’ is also the power of innovation; that is, to have systematic access to the institutional and cognitive conditions and opportunities for producing new things. With this power, big corporations and organizations create the

‘truth’ and circumstances for capital circulation. For example, the regulations for urbanization simultaneously destroyed rural areas by transforming their environments to increase production (i.e. Taiwan’s fourth nuclear power plant, see Chapters 3 and 4) and consumption (Harvey, 1989a). In Taiwan, ‘innovation’ is used to justify nuclear power. For example, Taipower invented a new technology to burn nuclear waste, but the risks of this ‘innovation’ remain unknown.

48 Thus, ‘Translegal power’ has facilitated the tension between the state and individual and between the global and local in Taiwan. This tension is particularly expressed in nuclear risk, which greatly contributes to the tendency of legitimation crisis. In Taiwan’s context, this relationship between legitimacy and risk can be examined from three perspectives discussed below (Beck, 2009: 24-46).

(1). Irrationality of risk calculus

Modern institutions, from the state, to banks, to food companies, claim control and security over the ‘unknown unknowns’. Moreover, the argument about knowing and not-knowing mega-risks erodes the established national and international norms. It is exactly unknown unknowns which cause far-reaching crises over the definition and construction of norms and responsibilities aimed at preventing the crises. Therefore, the ontology of risk does not privilege any particular kind of knowledge; it compels knowledge that is incommensurable. For example, the Tao people perceive nuclear waste as a kind of ‘evil spirit’ that disturbs the soul of their ancestors. As Beck and Holzer indicate, “It is not the number of dead and wounded and not the financial damage either, but rather a social feature that makes the hazards of mega-technology a political issue” (Beck and Holzer, 2007). In the case of nuclear power, the results of nuclear crises, such as the leaking of radioactive water into the ocean during the

Fukushima crisis, are incalculable18. In addition, according to Ackerman and Heinzerling (2002), the logic of financial calculation for risk can have a bias, because the damage and related cost in the future would be devalued at present if the norms of market prices are pursued.

18 Voice of America http://www.voanews.com/content/problems-keep-piling-up-in- fukushima/3194401.html

49 Ramana (2011b) highlights three aspects of the incalculability of nuclear accidents after the Fukushima crisis.

[1] Severe accidents at nuclear reactors have occurred much more frequently than what risk-assessment models predicted. [2] The probabilistic risk assessment method does a poor job of anticipating accidents in which a single event, such as a tsunami, causes failures in multiple safety systems. [3] Catastrophic nuclear accidents are inevitable, because designers and risk modelers cannot envision all possible ways in which complex systems can fail.

Moreover, in the age of globalization, science does not take place in the laboratory alone; the whole world has become the laboratory. This is particularly true in the case of nuclear crises. Risk management in the risk society is rooted in the hegemony of natural science. However, experts are trapped in a dilemma when faced with the unknown unknowns. The acceptance and rejection of potential harms often cannot be bridged by natural science. Also, the progress of knowledge can turn the acceptable into unacceptable overnight, especially in the age of globalization, in which the public shares information with unprecedented speed. For example, the attitudes toward nuclear energy drastically changed in Taiwan, Japan, and Germany after the Fukushima crisis (Sovacool and Valentine, 2012; also see Chapter 5).

The incalculability of nuclear risk can be summarized in three dimensions (Ramana, 2009: 127):

The economics of nuclear power, driven by both the high capital costs and financial uncertainties. The second is concern about catastrophic accidents; despite the development of newer reactor designs, the possibility of such an accident has not been completely eliminated. A third is to find a way of disposing nuclear waste that is technically feasible and politically acceptable to the public.

(2). Technocracy

50 With the increase of unseen and unwanted side effects, it is not easy to prove individual responsibility, and there are no legal norms to assign guilt. But “risks are social constructions and definitions based upon corresponding relations of definition” (Beck, 2009: 30). As a result, risks are products of struggles over the definitions within the context of specific relations of definitional power. Beck here combines the thought of Karl Marx (1867) and Max Weber (1922) to explore domination in modern society. The capitalist gains his power from owning the means of production. This kind of power enables the capitalist to decide what is produced and who is hired or fired.

In risk society, scientists and judges own the ‘means of definition’, although different scientists may have different opinions. Consequently, risk society grants experts authority over laypersons. Experts decide what the risks are and which liabilities and compensation can be derived from them. As a result, the institutionalized norms reinforce the ability of specific groups to impose their power over the public and can prioritize the interests of bureaucratic institutions over the public, leading to the establishment of a technocracy. For example, the official Fukushima Report states:

With such a powerful mandate [for economic growth], nuclear power became an unstoppable force, immune to scrutiny by civil society. Its regulation was entrusted to the same government bureaucracy responsible for its promotion (The National Diet of Japan, 2012: 9)

(3). Organized irresponsibility

Mega-risks, such as nuclear power, have challenged the risk calculus for three reasons. First, the harms are often unrecoverable and are not limited. Thus the concept of monetary compensation becomes problematic. Third, the scale of the ‘accident’ is unlimited by time and space. In other words, the rational norms to control the accidents are inapplicable since the scale of the accidents are unlimited. And

51 unfortunately, facing the unknown unknowns, the law of probability loses its ability to calculate the ‘acceptable risk’, and thus the effort to obtain ‘insurance’ suffers in vain.

The difficulty of rational calculations explains the periodic implosions of modern organized institutions and repeated ‘normalization of crises’. It is impossible to attribute the origins of a mega-risk to a particular person; thus it follows that nobody is readily identified as the responsible party. Taking Fukushima crisis as an example, the official report of Japan states:

This report singles out numerous individuals and organizations for harsh criticism, but the goal is not—and should not be—to lay blame. The goal must be to learn from this disaster, and reflect deeply on its fundamental causes, in order to ensure that it is never repeated (The National Diet of Japan, 2012: 9)

Beck’s comment on Fukushima crisis is: “Nobody really is responsible for those consequences. We have a system of organized irresponsibility” (quoted in The

Asahi Shinbun, July 6, 2011). Or, in the view of a Taiwanese professor in nuclear engineering, the Fukushima crisis is an ‘experiment conducted by God’ (Li, 2013).

In the age of global risk, some countries, areas, sectors, and enterprises benefit from the production of risks, whereas others suffer their consequences on public health and economic security. ‘Threats to nature’ therefore encompass not only environmental damage, such as the erosion of the coast, but also include the loss of jobs, capital, and property. In other words, the economic base may be destroyed in whole regions or countries (see Chapter 4). Consequently, this could damage the structure of the nation state and the global market. These are the side effects of mega-technology’s ‘side effects’. Moreover, because of the size of Taiwan, any kind of nuclear crisis at the

52 Fukushima level will literally doom all of Taiwanese society, rather than cause ‘side effects’.

For example, it was reported that the Taiwanese government tried to export nuclear waste to North Korea, frightening the international community (see Chapter 5). Apparently, partially due to the dismal record of Taipower and the Atomic Energy Council (AEC), no community in Taiwan wanted to be the storage place for nuclear waste (see Chapter 4). Moreover, in this time of global terrorism, keeping nuclear power in Taiwan may indirectly reinforce nuclear terrorism though the mismanagement of nuclear waste (see Chapter 4), as facilities related to nuclear power could become targets for terrorists.

From the above three perspectives, Beck’s ‘clashes of the risk culture’ can be seen at both the domestic and international levels. First, the modern state has watched its legitimacy erode. Particularly, there is a ‘legitimacy gap’ because modern institutions producing risks that transcend time and space are contributing to the legitimation crisis in the political system. Beck identifies the most convincing opponent of nuclear power industry as the nuclear industry itself (Beck, 1995). In Taiwan’s case, because nuclear power is conducted by only one state-owned power company, the state (central government) has to deal with nuclear problems directly. In this regard, the Taiwanese government has tried to balance the tension between popular sovereignty and basic human rights with nuclear power for decades.

Second, in the international community, the politics of capital circulation have also increased the ‘conflicts of cultures’. In Taiwan’s case, after the Fukushima crisis, it was revealed that some banned Japanese foods were sold in Taiwan (“Banned Japanese Fukushima Foods Mislabeled, Sold In Taiwan”, 2015). In fact, the Taiwanese

53 government did not take action to install stricter radioactive standards for Japanese foods after the Fukushima crisis (Ministry of Health and Welfare, 2012, also see Chapter 5).19

Although it may be argued that Taiwan matches the ideal type of modern society which originated in the context of Western culture as Habermas and Beck identify, it is arguable that Taiwanese society contains core elements of risk society20 for “home grown” reasons.

(1). From 1960s to 1980s, the KMT has followed the strategy of the development state, regulating the economic system with numerous capital intensive enterprises owned by the state or the KMT, including Taipower. Until today, the KMT owns business groups that have immense influence on Taiwan’s economic system. In this regard, Taiwan is a quasi-state with a quasi-formal democracy.

(2). The ideologies of progress and technocracy have been adopted to strengthen the legitimacy of the state; both the KMT and the DPP appeal to technological solutions for social, economic, and environmental problems.

(3). In Taiwan, a powerful labor class and left wing party do not exist, although labor and environmental problems have been known for decades. In modern Western countries, the disempowerment of labor has been achieved by the growth of the social welfare state and ‘relief mechanisms’ Habermas identifies (1987: 181). But in Taiwan, the disempowerment of the labor class has been due to the coercion of the state under martial law and the rise of the globalization. One of the unintended consequences

19 The Taiwanese government claimed that the proposed looser standard was the same as that in the European Union. 20 Generally, Habermas and Beck refer the western social welfare state as ‘advanced capitalist’, ‘modern’, or ‘industrial’ states. In this research, I do not distinguish the use of these terms.

54 is that the logic of the distribution of risk has occupied greater public attention than the logic of the distribution of wealth over time.

(4). The quasi-state legitimacy of Taiwan’s government (no real state legitimacy after the U.N. crisis) turned the island into a ‘risk state’. It can be argued that this is the factor setting Taiwan as a constant ‘exceptional’ case. Beck observes that due to mega risks, the modern state is forced to deal with many ‘exceptional situations’ over time and in order to deal with these situations, the democracy may be eroded because the state must pursue power which is not constrained by the formal democracy in order to handle ‘exceptional situations’, from responding terrorism to urgent environmental problems. In Taiwan’s case, losing the state legitimacy in the U.N. left the society a constant ‘exceptional situation’. This factor also greatly contributed to the development of nuclear power, creating a double ‘exceptional situation’ in Taiwan.

(5). Taiwan, as a small island, has heavily relied on imported energy, including fuel for nuclear power, to support its energy-intensive industries from the 1970s onward. As a result, Taiwan has not only faced risks due to being ‘locked in’ to the unstable global economic system, but also has suffered mega-risk because Taiwan cannot chose alternatives because it is an island without resources to be self sufficient.

2.4 Analytical Framework for Analyzing Taiwan’s Legitimacy Problem and Pursuit of Nuclear Power

In this chapter, core elements in the theories of Habermas and Beck are reviewed as a step in building an analytical framework to examine the legitimacy problem of Taiwan as well as its embrace of nuclear risk. Habermas creates a model for comprehensively analyzing the legitimacy problem in modern states by recognizing systematically distorted communication as a source (Habermas, 1987). Beck adopts the

55 Habermasian model to capture risk society’s predilections that can exacerbate their legitimacy problem (Beck, 2009b; Rosa, Renn, and McCright, 2014). By integrating their concepts, I can identify an analytical framework (Figure 2-2) for this research. In this research, I do not intend to develop a synthetic model or a general theory. My aim is not to analyze all modern crises Habermas and Beck identify, but to analyze Taiwan’s legitimacy problem and its relationship with nuclear power. This framework is applied to Taiwan in order to demonstrate the thesis of this dissertation. It is true that Taiwan, as a

case, has distinctive features not in evidence in other countries. But I hope to convince readers that there are also general features and these general features suggest that the social problems with nuclear power are common to modern states.

State Legitimation or State Legitimacy Crisis presented by Nuclear Power ▪ Nuclear power as a means to demonstrate the emergence of an ideology of progress ▪ Deepening of risk tendencies in society ▪ Evolution of risk society

Power Economic Political System System Money

Development Money Power Administration Strategy Implication for Legitimation Lifeworld (worldview/common sense for Technocracy communication) Irrationality of risk calculus Organized irresponsibility

Figure 2-2. Analytical Framework for analyzing the relationship between nuclear power and the legitimacy problem in Taiwan

This framework (Figure 2-2) illustrates nuclear power could be used as a means by a country’s leaders to try to secure the legitimacy of the state through the

56 promise of progress. But this strategy could also foster a home- grown legitimation crisis in the political system. The surge of the anti-nuclear movement in Taiwan led to the halt of the fourth nuclear project and is an example of how nuclear power’s adoption can spur a legitimation crisis. This intepretation suggests that nuclear power can cause a legitimation crisis rather than solve one. Another alternative is that nuclear power is only tangentially involved with issues of state legitimacy, and is mainly a product of energy resource scarity and or economic issues caused by high fuel prices.

Using a path analysis (Olobatuyi, 2006) methaphorically, there can be several “paths” of relationships and results. The framework in Figure 2-2 can offer a basis for analyzing multiple “paths”. I have focused on three paths based on the discussions in the research literature about relationships among State legitimacy, economic conditions, risk, and nuclear power. In Path I, the legitimacy of the state is enhanced or created by the development of nuclear power. In Path II (see Figure 2-3), an opposing relationship can be envisioned in which state legitimacy is diminished or lost by the introduction of nuclear power (see Figure 2-4). In Path III, nuclear power’s use is largely seen as the result of economic or energy resource factors and only indirectly, if at all, affects state legitimacy (see Figure 2-5). Each path is illustrated bellow.

Restore/ State Nuclear Enhance Threats Legitimacy Power State Crisis Legitimacy

Figure 2-3. Path I: Legitimacy of the state is enhanced or created by the development of nuclear power. Habermas defines the source o fthreats as political/governmental failure to susscessfully control capitsalist forces. He indicates that modern societies turn to technocracy as a remedy for the crisis in legitimacy. Habermas does not conclude that state legitimacy can be successfully restored. In Path I, this assumption is made by governmental and business leaders.

Increase d Mega- Risk New Threats Pre- State Nuclear Emption Threats Legitima Power of Civil cy crisis Society

Figure 2-4. Path II: State legitimacy is diminished or lost by the introduction of or continued reliance on nuclear power. Here, threats are Habermasian but new threats caused by nuclear power development deepen the problem.

State Economic/ Choice of Legitima- Risk Energy Nuclear cy Crisis Power Crisis

Restore/ Direct impact Enhance State Indirect impact Legitimac y

Figure 2-5. Path III: Nuclear power’s development is largely seen as a response to economic or energy resource factors and is indirectly affects state legitimacy. Threats are not Habermasian but exigent events largely traceable, in this case, to economic and energy resource conflicts or problems.

After discussing the historical and empirical record of nuclear power development in Taiwan (Chpater 3-5), the analytical framework in Figure 2-2 and the

58 three paths shown in Figure 2-3-2-5 are applied to determine the most effective explanation of Taiwan’s case (Chapter 6).

The historical and empirical record of Taiwan’s nuclear power projects is based on an extensive study of government, industry, and think tank reports. In addition, peer-reviewed research and scholarly contributions, especially in the form of books, are studied. An archival record of newspaper and other media stories was assembled. Finally,

I conducted interviews with key experts and activitists. I did not ask if each interviewee was pro-nuclear or anti-nuclear. Through these conversations I learned their views on how nuclear policies, civil society, technocracy and economy are related. These interviews did not use formal survey or questionnaire techniques. Instead, they were spontaneous conversations that became possible in the search for historical information and evidence. They are not intended to support statistical inferences about values or beliefs but to illustrate the range of thinking in Taiwan about this complex and controversial issue.21 Table 2-2.Categories of spontaneous interviews Former nuclear officials Former energy officials Former Taipower engineers Members of anti-nuclear groups University scholars

For some events analyzed for this dissertation, I was not only an observer but a participant. Two instances stand out. As discussed in Chapter 4, a housing unit was discovered in 1992 to have been built inTaipei using steel beams that were mixed with radioactive waste from Taiwan. My family lived in this housing unit while I was 4 to 13

21 I did not interview energy officials or politicains in office because I could easily learn their views on nuclear policies, civil society, etc. through their public talks reported by media or published in government or industry documents which I extensively cite in this dissertation.

59 years old. Later (2014), I participated in the occupation of the Legislative Yuan in Taiwan during the so-called Sunflower Movement protest at this national body. Was I ‘biased’ by these events? Certainly, I was influenced by them. In the case of my family, exposure to radiation waste during our life in Ming-Shen Masion gave me the opportunity in later years to personally reflect on the meaning of nuclear risk, not as a bystander, but as a witness to the problem. And my participation in the action to occupy the Legislative Yuan offered me the opportunity to experience the fragile yet important power of civil society. In both cases, I have taken precautions not to judge government or industry but to understand civil society’s role in governing mega-risk technology like nuclear power. I leave it to the reader to judge if I succeeded in this goal.

In Chapter 3, I describe how the nuclear issue intertwined with the legitimacy problem in Taiwan’s partisan politics from the 1970s to 2014. In Chapter 4, I present the nuclear accidents in Taiwan’s context and describe the characteristics of Taiwan’s risk society. In Chapter 5, I describe the history of Taiwan’s anti-nuclear movement. In Chapter 6, I use the analytical framework below to examine the relationship between nuclear power and the legitimacy problem in Taiwan’s history. Figure 2-6 shows the flow of this research.

60 Analysis: The dialectical relationship between The development of nuclear power and nuclear power and state legitimacy in nuclear politics in Ch3 Taiwan Taiwan

Ch6

Nuclear Accidents in Anti-nuclear Taiwan Movement in Taiwan Legitimation Crisis Ch4 Ch5

Figure 2-6 The Flow of this Research

In this study, I identify the contradictions between the legitimacy of the state and the development of nuclear power. I describe the problem of the KMT’s legitimacy and the development of nuclear power as a means of resolving Taiwan’s political and economic crises so as to maintain the legitimacy of the state.

I also provide historical evidence to describe the accidents in Taiwan’s nuclear society, because the empirical analysis of modern risks was not fully developed in Habermas’s theory. By providing the empirical evidence of nuclear accidents, I can connect Habermas’s thesis to Beck’s risk society theory, which can be viewed as a logical extension of Habermas’s analysis on the legitimacy problem.

Chapter 3

THE DEVELOPMENT OF NUCLEAR POWER IN TAIWAN

“Through the communication with international nuclear experts, we can shortly become a developed country” (Unied Daily News, Janurary 21, 1975) Vice President Yeng Chia-Kan

“We must have the fourth nuclear power complex…it is a rational decision…for the development of our country” (quoted in Chen, 1994) President Lee Teng-Huei

This chapter reviews the development of nuclear power in Taiwan and how nuclear power was practically used as a tool to address legitimacy problem over time. The risks that coevolved with nuclear power and raised concerns about its use are presented in Chapter 4.

3.1 Introduction Defeated by Mao’s Red Army in 1949, the Kuomintang of China (National People's Party of China, or KMT) retreated to the island of Taiwan. At the time, many people thought that the KMT would collapse in a couple months and Mao would take over Taiwan. That did not occur.

The Republic of China (R.O.C.) government continued to represent China in the United Nations (U.N.) with aid from the Western bloc until Mao’s People's Republic of China (P.R.C.) replaced the R.O.C. in the U.N. in 1971. This move resulted in a political crisis for the KMT, because legal support from the U.N. was a key component of the R.O.C.’s legitimacy in the international arena (Wang, 1989).

62 Taiwan’s economy recovered in the period following the Chinese Civil War with aid from the United States, but the 1973 Arab oil crisis shocked Taiwan’s growing industrial sector. For a country dependent on oil imports, this created a difficult situation. The GDP growth rate dropped from 12.8% to 1.2% in one year (R.O.C., Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics, 2016). In response, the KMT viewed establishing a domestic supply of energy in the form of nuclear power as a key part of the solution to part of its domestic legitimacy problem securing the loyalty of the public. Not only did the KMT believe that nuclear power promised the energy security needed for further industrialization, but the authoritarian party also believed that it could serve as a cultural symbol of the progress that would further justify their rule.

The chapter examines in depth the legitimacy issues faced by those in power in Taiwan. In section 3.2, I review Taiwan’s fundamental legitimacy problem as it came to light between the years after the establishment of the KMT on the island and the construction of the first nuclear power plants in Taiwan. In section 3.3, I analyze how these two problems intertwined in the partisan politics between the KMT and Taiwan’s principle opposition party, the Democratic Progressive Party, or DPP, from 1979 to 2014.

3.2 Legitimacy Problem and the Birth of Nuclear Power in Taiwan

Two days after Communist armies invaded South Korea, on June 27, 1950, President Truman declared that the United States would resist the Communist invasion in

Korea and requested the support of the U.N. in these efforts. Because of the Korean War, Chiang Kai-shek’s R.O.C. government, rather than Mao’s P.R.C. government, continued to represent China in the U.N. with the support of the Western bloc (United Nations, 1950: 21).

63 In order to rebuild Taiwan’s economy in the postwar (WWII) era, the United States supported KMT as it launched the ‘Nineteen Economic and Financial Reform Proposals’ in 1960 which aimed to help shape Taiwan into an exported-oriented industrial country by creating a modern financial system and infrastructure, and encouraging domestic and foreign investment in the island (Lin, 2004). Following these proposals, the economy of Taiwan expanded steadily until the first oil crisis in 1973, with an annual GDP growth rate of around 11% (R.O.C., Directorate General of Budget,

Accounting and Statistics, 2016).

During a 1958 military conflict between Taiwan and China over islands in the Taiwan Strait, President Eisenhower and Chiang Kai-shek considered a nuclear strike on China, but Eisenhower ultimately decided not to proceed with it, even though the United States already deployed nuclear missiles (on aircraft) in Taiwan (Lin, 2015). The potential nuclear threat in 1958 encouraged China to speed up its nuclear bomb project even after the Soviet Union withdrew aid. In 1964, China successfully conducted its first nuclear test, which resulted in the United States deciding to prevent Taiwan from building its own nuclear weapons in an attempt to maintain peace in East Asia. From the mid-1960s onward, all of Taiwan’s nuclear weapon projects were conducted under the table and then abandoned by 1988 due to pressure from the United States. Because

Taiwan still deals with the legacy of those projects, a review of the accidents and environmental problems caused by these projects is presented in Chapter 4.

From the 1960s onwards, Taiwan was gradually integrated into the global economy through its industrialization. As an export-oriented country, globalization had a direct and large influence on Taiwan. The R.O.C. loss of its seat to Mao’s P.R.C. government in the U.N. aroused panic in Taiwan’s society because the public wondered whether Taiwan had been abandoned by the Western bloc. Most countries ceased to

64 recognize the R.O.C. or even to recognize that Taiwan itself was a state. Economic activities and other ‘unofficial’ connections with other countries became the key means to demonstrate the R.O.C.’s (and the KMT’s) legal authority in front of the public. For example, in the 1970s, several nuclear conferences were held in Taiwan and allowed KMT to show to people in Taiwan and abroad that Taiwan was still an important partner of the advanced, democratic Western bloc.

Despite such efforts, an emigration among political-economic elites occurred throughout the 1970s. Some governmental officials even deserted their positions and fled to the United States. From 1971 to 1980, the number of Taiwanese immigrants in the United States was triple the rate in the previous decade. The general public grew frustrated and withdrew its loyalty to the KMT (Ko, 1981). Facing a legitimacy crisis due to its loss of U.N. status and the exodus of capital and population, the KMT government consequently launched a series of policies to stabilize its domestic legitimacy.

First, the KMT began to recruit local Taiwanese elites into the central government in 1972 to share political power with mainlanders who fled with Chiang Kai- shek, a process referred to as ‘Taiwanization’ (Tien, 1975; Amsden, 1985; Chao, 1992; Chen, 1995; Wang, 1996; Liu, 2001; Zhang, 2003). Key positions in the central government that had been monopolized originally by mainlanders were now being opened up to local Taiwanese.22 Next, in the economic system, the ‘Ten Major

Construction Projects’ and later ‘Twelve Major Construction Projects’ were launched.

22 In Taiwan, the KMT legally distinguished ‘people of other provinces’—so-called ‘mainlanders’—and ‘people of local province’—so-called ‘local Taiwanese’—during the martial law era. Generally, ‘mainlander’ refers to a person who retreated to Taiwan around 1949, and ‘local Taiwanese’ refers to a local, non-indigenous person who had already immigrated to Taiwan by the early 20th century. Accordingly, mainlander legislators ‘represented’ each ‘district’ on mainland China, and held their seats for life in the Legislative Yuan and National Assembly, a practice that continued into 1991 (Jacoby, 1967; Hsiao, 1985, 1992;Wang, 1996).

65 These projects covered everything from steel making, to a new highway system, railroad building, the expansion of the oil refinery industry, to nuclear complexes, which were described as crucial to support Taiwan’s further industrialization. Tables 3-3 and 3-4 illustrate the significance of nuclear complexes among these ‘Major Constructions’. Three nuclear complexes together account for about 30% of the budget of all ‘Major Constructions’.

In later decades, the KMT’s propaganda and school textbooks depicted the ‘Ten Major Constructions’ as evidence that the KMT had been and continued to be a party composed of brilliant and rational technocrats. In other words, after its ‘being China’ strategy failed to be accepted internationally, the KMT promoted itself as a ‘progressive authority’ to show its superiority to Mao’s P.R.C.

Chiang Ching-kuo took over the Taiwanese presidency in 1978, three years after the death of his father. In March 1981, the President announced that the KMT would lead the R.O.C. to peacefully win back mainland China, pointing to the economic progress in Taiwan. For Taiwanese students, the term ‘Ten Major Constructions’ was depicted in a manner similar to the American ‘New Deal’, and Chiang Ching-kuo was portrayed in textbooks as a savior, leading Taiwan towards riches and progress.

In fact, from 1960 to 1985, the GDP per capita in Taiwan grew twentyfold, from $164 to $3,290. This rapid economic growth contributed greatly to restoring the domestic legitimacy of the KMT (Wu and Cheng, 2011). Three nuclear complexes had been listed as ‘Major Construction Projects.’ The first went online in 1978 and all began commercial operation by 1985. From 1978 to 1985, electricity from nuclear power increased from 7% to 52% of total electricity supplies (Taipower, 2016). According to Hu (1995: 1), an environmental author who studied on nuclear risk communication:

When I was a teenager [in the 1970s], nuclear energy was a symbol of national strength and scientific progress…with the expectation that our country is as excellent as other advanced countries…

Chiang Ching-kuo’s progress-oriented strategy had vast influence on Taiwan even after martial law came to an end in 1987. Many people regarded Chiang Ching-kuo as a promoter of rich and democracy, despite the fact that he was in charge of surveillance from the 1950s to his death (Wu, 2003; Wu, 2008). Under the ideology of progress adopted by the island, nuclear power became a significant platform in the KMT’s political discourse. For example, as recently as 2015, KMT presidential candidate Hung Hsiu-chu celebrated Chiang Ching-kuo’s progressive achievements to justify reunification with mainland China, using the ideology of progress and prosperity to challenge the “irrational” populism encouraged by the DPP (Lee, 2015). Hung Hsiu-chu specifically accused the DPP’s anti-nuclear position as hampering Taiwan’s development (Chang, 2015; Yang, 2015).23

3.3 Nuclear Politics in Taiwan: From 1979 to 2014 Partisan nuclear politics prevailed from 1979 to 2014, the year the KMT’s cabinet eventually halted the fourth nuclear project in Taiwan. The politics of the era can be divided into three phases. The first phase begins in 1979, the year of the Kaohsiung incident (the largest political protest during the martial law era) and ends in 1987, the end of martial law era. Generally it is widely regarded as the phase which witnessed the rise of ‘social power’ (the power of civil society) in Taiwan, most notably in the rising opposition to nuclear power. During the second phase (1988 to 2008), the death of Chiang Ching-kuo triggered further Taiwanization in the KMT, and political conflicts between the KMT and DPP on nuclear power issues. Although the DPP held the

23 Chu Li-lun replaced Hung in Oct 2015 as the KMT presidential candidate.

67 presidency from 2000 to 2008, it failed to terminate the construction of the fourth nuclear power plant. In the third phase (2009 to 2014), the KMT returned to presidency and revived its authoritarian measures. However, the Fukushima crisis and revival of the anti- nuclear movement finally forced the KMT to halt the construction of the fourth nuclear power plant in 2014.

3.3.1 Nuclear Politics in Taiwan (1979-1987)

All the KMT’s ‘progressive’ efforts in the 1970s could not prevent the rise of civil society and the 1979 Kaohsiung Incident, the climax of the Tanwai movement (Tanwai means outside the Party [KMT]). The Incident occurred after Tanwai activists applied for, and were denied, a permit to hold a human rights forum on December 10, Human Rights Day. The activists held a march in Kaohsiung instead. Around 100,000 people joined the march, which was eventually suppressed by the military police.

According to Wang (1993), political tensions arose for the following reasons. First, the ‘Taiwanization’ undertaken in the KMT and government in the 1970s encouraged some of the displaced political ‘losers’ to run as independent candidates in local elections and ally with anti-KMT political activists. Second, rapid industrialization resulted in the migration of many agricultural workers into the industrial, commercial, and service sectors. The newly created petty bourgeois and urban laborers formed the base for mobilizing the anti-KMT ‘Tanwai movement’. Third, the end of ‘being China’ in the U.N. accelerated the spread of Taiwanese nationalism in local elections. The United States often monitored local elections, providing political protection to the many independent candidates during the campaigns, adding pressure to the KMT. In 1977, independent candidates scored significant victories in local elections, and charged the KMT with electoral fraud in the city of Chung Li, leading to the first significant street protest of the 1970s (The Chung Li Event). Under these circumstances, the Tanwai

68 movement reached its climax with the illegal demonstration in Kaohsiung on December 10, 1979, held by core members of the anti-KMT publication Formosa Magazine.

The Kaohsiung Incident triggered other social movements which indirectly challenged the legitimacy of the KMT. Environmental protests placed particular pressure on KMT leaders, as many local KMT politicians supported them. For example, residents of Hsin-Chu City protested the pollution from LCY Group (a petrochemical company) in the mid-1980s, and residents in Taichung City protested a proposal by Du Pont, which eventually cancelled the investment (Ho, 2006).

Although the secret police tried to suppress these protests, the power of the environmental movement flourished under the martial law regime. According to Ho (2006), most environmental activists did not have strong ties with political activists, and many environmental groups were in fact organized by local KMT politicians. Moreover, local environmental protests were usually tied with local Buddhist temples, which had long been social-cultural centers of Taiwanese identity and served as political bases of local leaders (Weller and Hsiao, 1998). As a result, the KMT leadership from the central government could not easily label these environmental protesters as ‘communists’ or ‘traitors of the Chinese people’. According to Ho (2006), even though environmental protestors showed little interest in joining an anti-KMT leadership movement during this decade, their protests created a better climate for political activists to promote political reform in the ensuing years.

According to Hsiao (1987: 3), scholars, especially scholars of natural science, were the pioneers of environmental protection in Taiwan in the late 1970s. Although these scholars were allowed to express their opinion on some official occasions, they had few opportunities to express their thoughts in the mass media or publish articles related to

69 environmental protection. Moreover, because nuclear power was a highly sensitive issue under the martial law regime, there was relatively little public discourse on nuclear power compared to other environmental issues. According to my conversation with a former nuclear official “No, no one dared to question the government at the time [1970s], if you said something political incorrect in the office, your colleagues would smirk, yes, they knew that you will be dismissed and they have more chance for promotion . . .”.24

However, the Three Mile Island Crisis in the United States (a partial core meltdown and radiation release) that occurred in March 1979 triggered the publication of some anti-nuclear magazine articles warning of the risks associated with commercial nuclear power. According to Ho, a total of 72 anti-nuclear articles were published in major Tanwai magazines from 1981 to 1986 (Ho, 2003: 691). In addition, scholars who had studied in the United States gradually introduced the idea of environmental and ecological protection into Taiwan.. In particular, Lin Jung-I, a pioneer of Taiwan’s anti- nuclear movement, introduced the concepts of anti-technocracy and anti-scientism in his magazine articles.25 Lin’s articles had vast influence on the anti-nuclear discourse in the early 1980s (Hu, 1995), even though they were not well known by the public. Unfortunately, according to Ho (2003), many of the early anti-nuclear articles were full of expertise and jargon, thus their arguments were not accessible for laypersons.

In October 1984, the first ‘International Topical Meeting on Nuclear

Thermal-Hydraulics, Operation and Safety’ was held in Taipei. To the KMT government, being able to host this meeting was deemed a great diplomatic honor, given that the United States had terminated the official diplomatic relationship with Taiwan (R.O.C.) in

24 I leaned this view in an unofficial meeting. It was not a planned interview. 25 Lin claims he was highly influenced by Karl Popper’s philosophy. Lin was also forced by the secret police to depart Taiwan in 1984 and was not allowed to enter Taiwan by 1987 (Lin, 2014). Lin’s early articles also resulted in the banning of a magazine (Ho, 2003).

70 January 1979 (Hu, 1995). In particular, Taiwan’s nuclear supporters promoted themselves as doing a favor for the U.S. nuclear industry, which was in trouble after the 1979 Three Mile Island crisis. Taiwanese nuclear scholars even talked with American experts.

“. . . if you don’t promote nuclear business overseas eagerly, yourself will be fired soon . . .” and “. . . we [Taiwan] already had a lot of kinds of pollution, thus the contamination of the marine ecology [through nuclear power], even if it was true, should not be our primary concern . . . ” (quoted in Hu, 1995: 3).

Moreover, after losing the official diplomatic relationship with the United States in 1979 and the revocation of the mutual defense treaty, many of Taiwanese people feared possible invasion from China as they did when the U.N. revoked Taiwan’s (R.O.C.) membership in 1971. Some people viewed further prompting nuclear power as an opportunity for national security (Hu, 1995: 4). Even Wang, a victim of a radioactive accident who uncovered corruption in nuclear-related governmental departments, believed nuclear weapons research was worth pursuing for national glory and self- defense (Wang, 1996:140). In fact, many power elites believed nuclear weapons were a practical option for securing Taiwan’s state legitimacy (Lin, 2014).

In the early 1980s the public knew little about the nuclear complexes in

Taiwan. According to Hsiao’s 1983 survey, 46% of 1,146 participants did not know that two nuclear power plants had already been built. In addition, 97% of the survey participants knew little or nothing about nuclear power, but about 70% were optimistic about nuclear power thanks to the government’s positive nuclear advertisements (Hsiao, 1987: 228-229). For example, in 1978, the chairman of Taipower claimed that “hugging two nuclear waste barrels is safer than hugging a woman” (quoted in Lin, 2014: 264).

71 Even so, persuaded by the anti-nuclear scholars, fifty-five KMT and six Tanwai legislators requested the halt of the fourth nuclear complex project in March 1985, citing environmental and financial concerns. In addition, the spare capacity of electricity reached 22% in 1984 and 55% in 1985 respectively, making it difficult for the Taipower to justify a need for a new nuclear power plant in the near future. The government televised a scholarly debate on nuclear in April 1985, and the cabinet decided to put the fourth nuclear project on hold in May 1985.26

At the same time, the legitimacy of the KMT was challenged by Tanwai activists as a way of diminishing the KMT’s progressive image in the public sphere. Activists pointed to various government failures and corruption. Tanwai legislators brought public attention to the financial and safety problems of the third nuclear complex through 1984 and 1985 in the Legislative Yuan. The original budget for the third reactor had been estimated at $0.89 billion, but that figure was later increased to around $3 billion (Ho, 2003). The Tanwai attributed this jump in cost to a lack of financial oversight on the part of the KMT.

In addition, political activists, as well as many environmental activists, believed that Taiwan’s environmental problems were the results of the technocracy, carelessness, and corruption in the KMT. Many of them believed that ending the dictatorship of KMT was the fundamental step for resolving environmental and social problems. In this respect, the nuclear power industry was an easy target for muckraking (Wu, 2002, also see Chapter 5). For example, a July 1985 explosion at the new third nuclear complex triggered public panic, while Taipower’s attempt to hide information about the incident further irritated legislators and raised more questions (Hsiao, 1987; Ho,

26 Liao (1993: 8) indicates the true reason for holding the fourth nuclear project was that KMT politicians could not achieve consensus on the distribution of profit.

72 2006). According to Hsiao’s 1986 survey, even before the Chernobyl crisis, about 60% of the survey participants concerned nuclear safety of nuclear power plants, while Taipower planned to have total six nuclear power plants by 2000 (Hsiao, 1987: 268).

Beleaguered by increasing protests and feeling the pressure from the United States, Chiang Ching-kuo finally declared in August 1985 that “If someone asks me whether anyone in my family would run for the next presidential term, my reply is, it can’t be and it won’t be” (“Taiwan Chief rules out chance family member will succeed him”, 1985).27 This announcement marked the coming of democracy in Taiwan. According to Wu (2003), Chiang removed the last obstacle to Taiwanese democracy— himself—and thus opened the door for questioning the legitimacy of the state (KMT).

The Chernobyl crisis in April 1986 triggered the first Taiwanese anti-nuclear protest, located in front of the Taipower headquarters in October 1986. Due to the immense public pressure following the catastrophe, the Legislative Yuan froze the budget of the fourth nuclear project in 1987. In addition, the newly established DPP recruited many members from environmental groups and served as a platform to formally connect environmental grassroots activists, anti-nuclear scholars, and political activists. In July 1987, Taiwan Martial Law was lifted by President Chiang Ching-kou. The anti-nuclear discourse further flourished in the public sphere through the coordinated efforts of environmental and anti-nuclear groups. From that time on, anti-nuclear politics (focusing on the fourth nuclear project) became a focus of Taiwan’s partisan politics and further intertwined with the legitimacy problem for decades.

27 In 1984, Chiang Ching-kuo and his arranged son, Chiang Hsiao-wu, conducted the assassination of American citizen Henry Liu in California. Henry Liu was a former KMT officer who blackmailed the KMT. Liu’s death was widely viewed as the last straw which made the United States determined to promote democracy in Taiwan (“The murder of Henry Liu”, 1985; Wu, 2003; Kan, 2010).

73 3.3.2 Nuclear Politics in Taiwan (1988-2008) When Chiang Ching-kuo died suddenly in January 1988, Vice President Lee Teng-huei succeeded him as President. Lee further promoted the policy of ‘Taiwanization’ in the KMT and the government. Taiwanization reached its climax when Lee introduced numerous Taiwanese political-economic elites and capitalists into the KMT leadership in order to stymie his political rivals. The mainlander political elites faced challenges inside the KMT, and Lee’s personal authority met with strong opposition from conservative KMT politicians.28 The newly established DPP and the rise of social movements also challenged the KMT’s legitimacy. Under these circumstances, Lee promoted the fourth nuclear project along with other industrial projects as a way to strengthen his personal authority and KMT’s legitimacy. The unstable political situation in Taiwan (due to the conflicts inside and outside the KMT) was regarded as a key reason for the withdrawal of investments in the industrial sector. In January 1989, eight major business leaders released a public statement, ‘The Wrath from Capitalists’, which asked the government to revive its administrative power to suppress the environmental and labor movements and create a better investment climate (Wang, 1993, 1996).

In the wake of the request from the capitalists, the technocrats gained unprecedented esteem after Lee was elected by the National Assembly to the position of

R.O.C. President in May 1990. Lee assigned his Chief of the General Staff, Hau Pei-tsun, as the Prime Minster for enforcing economic policies. According to Wang (1993: 86-91),

Lee Teng-huei also created a coalition of ‘military leaders-technocrats-capitalists’ to secure his authority. Hau Pei-tsun then declared he would suppress the ‘rogues from social movements’ to stimulate investment. Since Lee and the KMT leadership could not

28 Lee, a technocrat who had no political background, was directly promoted by Chiang Ching-kuo as a puppet for his arranged son, Chiang Hsiao-wu, who however was dismissed after the death of Henry Liu. See note 5.

74 divinize themselves as Chiang Kai-shek and Chiang Ching-kuo did under martial law, Lee had to continue to implement progressive strategies, including constructing the fourth nuclear complex, in order to justify the KMT’s legitimacy.

While Lee was busy fighting his political rivals inside the KMT, nuclear politics in Taiwan were heating up. In 1988, the DPP politicians often participated in anti-nuclear protests and built strong relationships with the anti-nuclear activists in the

Gongliao District of Taipei County, selected location selected as the site of the fourth nuclear complex.29 In addition, the title of Lin Jung-I’s article “Anti-Nuclear Power is for Anti-Dictatorship”, became a DPP slogan for building a coalition with the anti-nuclear movement and for challenging the legitimacy of the KMT in the 1989 local elections.30 Interestingly, the KMT was happy to put the designation of ‘anti-nuclear’ onto the DPP, thus also implying that the party was run by a group of irrational, opportunist politicians who were anti-business and anti-science. To maintain its position as the rational party, in spring 1989, KMT and Taipower held a series of nuclear debates in universities and a national ‘Technology Train Forum’ for educating the public with ‘objective’ and ‘scientific’ knowledge on nuclear power (Hu, 1995).

Meanwhile, in December 1989, DPP candidate You Ching became the first non-KMT magistrate to be elected in Taipei County (reclassified as New Taipei City in 2010). You Ching had participated in the anti-nuclear discourse since the mid-1980s.

After the end of Taiwan’s martial law period, anti-nuclear protests targeted not only the fourth nuclear project, but also the security and management of the existing three nuclear

29 Gongliao is located in the east corner of Taiwan around 40 kilometers from Taipei City. 30 Lin’s article focused on criticizing the technocracy of the Taipower and providing political economic analysis on the global nuclear industry. But in 2013, Lin clarified that he actually meant to challenge technocracy, scientism, and political dictatorship (Lin, 2013).

75 power plants. Taipei County, where the first and second nuclear complexes were also located, became the frontline of nuclear politics.

At the beginning of 1991, Prime Minster Hau Pei-tsun declared that “the fourth nuclear power plant must be built” (United Daily News, 1991/2/13), even though the Environmental Impact Assessment had not been filed. In March, Hau Pei-tsun further pointed out “…the fourth nuclear project is a scientific issue, which should not be resolved as a political issue. Otherwise we will cause unnecessary trouble…” (United Daily News, 1991, 3/16). Ironically, a few days before Hau’s talk, the KMT-controlled Council of Taipei County had made a decision to hold a referendum in the County about the fourth nuclear project. 31

In May 1991, DPP’s You Ching ordered the Taipei County police force to tear down ‘illegal construction’ on the fourth nuclear site, claiming that the construction permit had yet to be issued by Taipei County. Although the action on the part of Taipei County officials at the site was halted by the central government’s special police force, You Ching continued with his anti-nuclear policy. You Ching not only requested more anti-nuclear scholars to join the environmental impact assessment committee, he also organized a boycott with other anti-nuclear committee members by not attending the final meeting and by promoting anti-nuclear education in middle and elementary schools in Taipei County. In this regard, the state legitimacy was challenged at several levels within

Taipei County. Mobilizing DPP-controlled cities and counties to challenge state (KMT) legitimacy through environmental issues also became an important strategy for the DPP during the 1990s (Ho, 2006).

31 Many local politicians in Taipei County had to respond the pressure from the public due to the upcoming elections.

76 Taiwan’s Atomic Energy Council (AEC) passed the Environmental Impact Assessment for the fourth nuclear complex without the participation of anti-nuclear committee members in September 1991, even though You Ching and four other anti- nuclear committee members did not recognize the legal validity of the Assessment. In addition, when the DPP passed a resolution in October 1991 for pursuing Taiwanese independence and for challenging the state legitimacy of R.O.CPrime Minister Hau threatened to disband the DPP for its ‘rebellion’. According to Ho (2006), this threat represented one of the reasons why the DPP further strengthened its coalition with social movements. Thus the anti-nuclear movement, gained more political support from DPP. Moreover, the DPP recruited many activists from the environmental groups because it did not have enough staff and candidates for campaigning. For example, Lin Jung-I, the author of ‘anti-nuclear is for anti-Dictatorship’ joined the DPP and ran the campaigns in the late 1980s and the 1990s.

The KMT cabinet officially reopened the fourth nuclear project in February 1992, even though some committee members were excluded from writing the final report of the Environmental Impact Assessment (Sunyunsuan Foundation, 2000: 45). Under direct pressure from President Lee, KMT legislators unfroze the budget for the project in June 1992, because they needed the party’s resources for the upcoming elections. In this way, the fourth nuclear power was directly affected by the state legitimacy through representative democracy.

In December 1992, the Legislative Yuan held its first complete reelection since 1949. Having won around one third of the seats, the DPP made the Legislative Yuan the center stage for its anti-nuclear campaign. Throughout the 1990s, as they obtained more powerful positions in the political system, the major DPP leaders gradually dissociated themselves from social movements. Lin Yi-hsiung was perhaps the

77 only exception. A major leader in the DPP, Lin maintained close relationships with environmental groups and promoted the national referendum for anti-nuclear beginning in the 1990s.

In June 1993, DPP legislators proposed to review the ‘unfreeze the fourth nuclear budget resolution’, questioning its validity. DPP’s proposal even won the support from some KMT anti-nuclear legislators. However, eventually the Legislative Yuan retained the resolution by a vote of 76 to 57 in July 1993.

In August 1993, seven legislators quit the KMT to establish the New Party, which insisted on ‘reunifying with mainland China’ and accused President Lee Teng-huei of betraying the pathway of ‘reunification’. Lee’s authority also faced challenges from his conservative rivals inside the KMT. Ironically, in order to challenge the legitimacy of the ‘Taiwanized R.O.C.’, the New Party stood firmly with the DPP on its anti-nuclear position, despite holding the opposite position on national identity. Like the DPP, the newly created New Party was anti-nuclear and expressed a desire to put a stop to the ongoing nuclear project. In this regard, the New Party and DPP both used their anti- nuclear stance to challenge state legitimacy.

In January 1994, Taipower and the AEC increased the capacity of the forth nuclear power plant from 2 GW to 2.6 GW without revisiting the Environment Impact

Assessment. Furthermore, in May 1994, the Taipower requested a budget of $3.8 billion spread over seven years to complete the fourth nuclear project. This request violated the Budget Act, which stated that the governmental budget could only be approved year by year. The New Party and the DPP tried to block the budget increase but failed due to the KMT-controlled majority in the Legislative Yuan. However, under the pressure from the DPP and environmental groups, the Gongliao District held a local referendum on the

78 fourth nuclear project in May 1994. Of the 58% of the people who voted, 96% voted against construction of the nuclear power plant. Although this local referendum was considered invalid because there was no law of referendums at the time, it did indicate that the local residents did not support nuclear power.

The New Party called attention to the state legitimacy problem in the 1994 local elections while maintaining its coalition with the DPP against the fourth nuclear project.32 In the 1995 legislative election, the DPP and New Party together won 75 seats (DPP: 54; New Party: 21), and the KMT won 85 seats in the Legislative Yuan. This encouraged the DPP and the New Party to launch an ambush in the Legislative Yuan on May 24, 1996—the day the winner of the bid for the nuclear reactors in the fourth nuclear complex was announced. The DPP and New Party passed a resolution to abort the fourth nuclear project. Consequently, the KMT cabinet requested a reconsideration of the fourth nuclear complex in the Legislative Yuan in June, and in October 1996, the Legislative

Yuan passed the request from the cabinet to continue the fourth nuclear project. During the conflict in October 1996, the DPP released a statement, declaring that it was truly separated from ‘street violence’ and withdrawing its support to anti-nuclear protesters (“No. 1 reactor is coming, Gongliao starts the protest”, 2003).

Earlier in the same year (March 1996), Lee Teng-hui was elected as the R.O.C. President with 54% of the vote. Lee therefore caught international attention and was called “Mr. Democracy” by Newsweek (Maynard, 1996). The international media portrayed Lee as a defender of Taiwan’s democratic state legitimacy against China.33

32 In 1990s, the New Party major leaders claimed that if the DPP won the local elections, the R.O.C. which supposed to be represent China, would be eventually replaced by the Republic of Taiwan (Fell, 2005: 85- 107). 33 Lee visited the United States in 1995, thus became first R.O.C. President who officially visited the United States; through this trip Lee gained an international reputation. Moreover, the United States sent

79 Hence, Lee’s charismatic authority was entrenched as he historically won both significant domestic and international support. This may have been the key reason why the DPP and the New Party could not win enough social support to against Lee in 1996 anti-nuclear politics.

In 1997, the DPP and the New Party successfully deleted part of the fourth nuclear project budget in the Legislative Yuan, but construction was not affected. The

AEC approved the construction permit of the fourth nuclear complex on March 18, 1999. As chairman of the DPP and also a founder of ‘Nuke 4 Referendum Initiative Association’ (NRIA), Lin Yi-hsiung mobilized an anti-nuclear protest. However, the momentum for anti-nuclear politics gradually weakened after the failure of the 1996 reconsideration voting. When Chen Shui-bian from the DPP won the presidential election in March 2000, nuclear politics immediately came back to the center of the political stage. From that time on, the domestic legitimacy problem and anti-nuclear politics became further entangled.

The 2000-2001 nuclear political struggles began with the formation of the pan-blue and pan-green coalitions. The pan-blue camp was composed of the KMT, the newly established People First Party, and the New Party. The pan-green coalition included the DPP and the newly established Taiwan Solidarity Union. The DPP rose to power with the election of a charismatic political leader, President Chen Shui-bian in

2000. Despite his personal appeal, Chen failed to terminate the fourth nuclear project, to the disappointment of many environmental activists who believed he would do.

an aircraft carrier through the Taiwan Strait to show support for Taiwan’s democracy during the 1996 election.

80 According Ho (2006), the DPP made several tactical mistakes which caused them to lose the initiative on the anti-nuclear issue in 2000. First, before Chen took office in May 2000, the DPP failed to coordinate with anti-nuclear politicians in the KMT, People First Party, and New Party, even though environmental groups brought the anti- nuclear discourse back in the public sphere. Second, although President Chen ordered the cabinet to conduct a reassessment on the fourth nuclear project from June to September, Chen did not try to investigate the corruption and administrative negligence/violations in the Taipower or the AEC, even though many problems in these two departments had been known for decades and had been pointed out by the Control Yuan (see Chapters 4 and 5). As a result, during the reassessment, the new Minister of Economic Affairs, Lin Hsin-I, suffered immense sabotage from his staff. “Almost each word he [Lin] said was opposed by his staff” (quoted in Ho, 2002: 121).

Third, the DPP basically remained mute in the public sphere during the reassessment, avoided using anti-nuclear propaganda, and did not attempt to recruit capitalists who could benefit from the alternatives of the fourth nuclear complex, such as those associated with coal plants, natural gas plants, and renewable energy.34 For example, until October 2000, the DPP cabinet did not open any new bids for private power plants, while some bids had been on the books since the 1990s (Ho, 2002).

In addition, the DPP, with the exception of a few leaders, was not interested in promoting a national referendum on nuclear power during the controversial debate, although President Chen himself had held a local referendum while he was mayor of Taipei City. It is not an exaggeration to say that the DPP did nothing aggressive on the nuclear power issue from March to September 2000, but merely created a reassessment

34 In 1999, a major business leader, Wang Yung-ching, the founder of Formosa Plastics Corporation, already proposed alternatives of the fourth nuclear complex (Ho, 2002).

81 committee composed of experts, delegates of major parties, and governmental officers both pro-nuclear and anti-nuclear. The KMT and the People First Party refused to send delegates to endorse the reassessment, which eventually achieved four consensuses, which addressed the importance of debating nuclear power, sustainability, stable energy supply, and nuclear waste disposal, among the committee members, despite not taking clear position on the fourth nuclear project.

According to Ho (2006), the DPP may have tried to show that its nuclear policy decision was based on professional and rational discussion, rather than on ‘irrational’ popular opinion because the DPP, as a party created by political protesters, eagerly wanted to build its own ‘rational image’ in the public sphere when it first came into power—by 2000, DPP legislators often threw punches at other legislators during meetings on nuclear power and other issues in the Legislative Yuan. In addition, President Chen avoided provoking the pan-blue coalition, which had the majority in the

Legislative Yuan, which was ready to review the annual budget by the end of September 2000.

Meanwhile, the pan-blue coalition rallied quickly to challenge the legitimacy of DPP’s ‘Taiwanized R.O.C.’ after the presidential election in March 2000. For the pan- blue leaders, the DPP effectively ‘stole’ Taiwan from China with their stance on Taiwanese independence. The DPP also came under fire by the pan-blue coalition and

China for its Taiwanese ideology during the nuclear political struggle. The fourth nuclear project was an easy target for attacking the DPP in the aftermath of the 1998 Asia Financial crisis and the 2000 Dot-com crash, as the fourth nuclear power project was justified by the pro-nuclear side for securing the economy, because Taiwan’s economic system was already heavily hampered by the 1998 Asia financial crisis. The Chinese National Federation of Industries, one of the key industrial associations in Taiwan,

82 declared that most of its members supported the fourth nuclear project in September 2000 (Tsai, 2000).

Knowing that President Chen tried to dismiss the fourth nuclear controversy after the Legislative Yuan passed the annual budget, the pan-blue coalition rejected the annual budget drafted by the cabinet on September 19, 2000. The pan-blue coalition announced that the Legislative Yuan would not pass the annual budget until the cabinet took a clear position on the fourth nuclear project. Under these circumstances, President Chen decided to confront the KMT rather than seek political alliance with his potential supporters in the pan-blue camp. On September 29 and 20. President Chen and Minster of Economic Affairs, Lin Hsin-I, supported an international conference on sustainable energy and environmental strategies which was held by the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy at University of Delaware and the Institute for National Policy Research in Taiwan. During the conference, nuclear risks and alternatives of conventional energy paradigm were comprehensively discussed (Byrne and Lin, 2001; Falmin, 2001; Feiveson, 2001; Huang, 2001; Takagi, 2001). This conference may strengthen President Chen’s confidence in anti-nuclear stance because the knowledge and reputation of international scholars would justify DPP’s anti-nuclear position, which was usually labelled as ‘irrational’ by the KMT as mentioned earlier.

On October 27, Prime Minister Chang Chun-hsiung announced he would to terminate the fourth nuclear project thirty minutes after a meeting between President Chen Shui-bian and the KMT chairman Lien Chan, who was thus widely considered as being humiliated by President Chen (Tsai, 2000).

The recklessness of President Chen provoked an overwhelming attack from the pan-blue coalition, which led to the New Party withdrawing its anti-nuclear position

83 in an act of retaliation. The New Party claimed that Chen caused a constitutional crisis, which took priority over anti-nuclear. Moreover, the pan-blue coalition was further stabilized after Chen’s decision. At the end of October, polls showed that around 70% of pan-blue coalition and DPP supporters held the same position on the fourth nuclear power plant as their parties. In particular, 88% of New Party supporters expressed support for the fourth nuclear complex (United Daily News, October 30, 2000). Therefore, the pan-blue coalition could justify its political action, because it held the majority in the Legislative Yuan and also had the support of their base. On October 30, the pan-blue camp declared that there will be no more negotiation with DPP.

In November and December 2000, the pan-blue legislators impeached Prime Minister Chang Chun-hsiung and were also ready to launch a recall election to remove President Chen. The legal process of the recall election was eventually halted by KMT chairman Lein Chan. Following the Constitutional interpretation of the Supreme Court,

Prime Minister delivered a report to the Legislative Yuan for terminating the fourth nuclear, while the Legislative Yuan voted for the fourth nuclear project again on January 31, 2001. The Legislative Yuan passed the continuation of the fourth nuclear project with a vote of 134:70. In February, the Legislative Yuan and the DPP cabinet released an agreement, which set an ultimate goal as pursuing a ‘no nuclear homeland with sufficient energy supply’ but the fourth nuclear complex has to be continued (Atomic Energy Council, 2003).

This political fiasco sharply hampered the legitimacy of the DPP government. In the next decade, most of the major DPP leaders remained inactive on the

84 anti-nuclear issue. One senior anti-nuclear activist believed that President Chen’s recklessness spoiled the anti-fourth nuclear politician’s career:35

At the beginning, he [President Chen] did not expect he would win the election. He promised Gongliao residents he will abolish the fourth nuclear complex once he was elected…for some reason he failed to coordinate with the People First Party after the election…The reassessment, looks superficial to me, they did not treat it seriously…the quality of some discussions and data was questionable…

He [President Chen] just wanted to humiliate Lein Chan without considering the consequences …is it necessary [to announce the termination right after the meeting with Lein]? …No wonder they [the pan-blue] fought back…and he [President Chen] chickened out at the last moment when they [the pan-blue] tried to make a recall election…in fact he stood a chance.

In the December 2001 legislative election, the Pan-blue and the pan-green coalitions won 115 and 100 seats in the Legislative Yuan, respectively. Moreover, the pan-green coalition neutralized Chen’s authority and his ‘reconciliation with Pan-blue’ effort. Subsequently, the Taiwan Solidarity Union and fundamentalists in the DPP pushed Chen to aggressively defend against the military threat from China, while most business leaders and pan-blue looked to the Chinese market to save Taiwan’s economy under the wave of globalization.

In this respect, the rise of business power that accompanied the nuclear politics in 2000-2001 also affected Taiwan’s state legitimacy. According to Beck (see

Chapter 2), in the age of globalization, businesses have the power to override the power of the state through their power in the market, and their operations have resulted in political, economic, and environmental risks borne by all of society. The pro-Chinese media portrayed Chen as a destroyer of the economy, despite the fact that during his

35 In a casual meeting with this activist, the author learned this view. It was not a planned interview.

85 presidency (2000-2008) environmental protection, land speculation, and investment laws were further deregulated. President Chen and the pan-green not only created a constitutional crisis in the political system by trying to terminate the fourth nuclear project, but also risked the security of the economic system by potentially foregoing business opportunities with China. The pan-blue justified the fourth nuclear power project as a way to help Taiwan’s energy-intensive industries, such as semi-conductor manufacturing, steel making, and oil refining, prosper under the threat of globalization.

For their part, the pan-green coalition portrayed the Pan-blue coalition as a puppet of China, which threatened Taiwan’s state legitimacy. In August, 2002, President Chen declared that a national referendum was the only legitimate way for Taiwanese people to decide Taiwan’s state legitimacy. Later the DPP cabinet sided with Chen, advocating in favor of a national referendum on the fourth nuclear power project.

The Referendum Act passed at the end of 2003 and was enacted in January

2004. The first nationwide referendum was held in March 2004 at the same time as the presidential election and included two questions initiated by President Chen that did not concern nuclear power. Due to the high threshold needed for a referendum to be valid (50% turnout rate) and the supervision system installed in the Referendum Act by the Pan-blue coalition, none of the national referendums during Chen’s presidency proved effective. Even if they had been effective, none of the topics were related to nuclear power.

Ironically, anti-nuclear, a key issue which contributed to the establishment of Referendum Act, disappeared from the political stage.36 Then, in 2005, the Kyoto Protocol entered into force. Although Taiwan was not a party of it, carbon reduction thus

36 Chen later withdrew on both issues, new constitution and anti-nuclear, after he was reelected in 2004.

86 became a key argument for the nuclear proponents. In August 2006, the budget of the fourth nuclear project was raised from $5.7 billion to $7 billion, a 38% increase, and commercial operation was rescheduled to begin in July 2009.37 In July 2006, the DPP Vice President Lu Hsiu-lien even suggested that nuclear power could help with Taiwan’s carbon emissions reduction.

Frustrated by the DPP and the endless partisan politics between the Pan-blue and Pan-green coalitions, Lin Yi-hsiung quit the DPP in 2006. Regarding the fourth nuclear complex, it was revealed by the media that in February 2008 that the Taipower illegally ‘redesigned’ the original blueprint made by General Electric (GE) without the permission of the Atomic Energy Council (see Chapter 4). This scandal provoked attack from environmental groups but the major parties were silent.38 Presidential candidates from both the KMT and DPP declared that the fourth nuclear project should be continued. In the same month, Taipower even suggested to add total 12 new reactors in existing three nuclear complexes and the unfinished fourth plant in the future (Shen, 2008). As a result, the construction continued with government approval and the redesign was endorsed by the Atomic Energy Council. GE would not be held responsible for the safety of the redesigned nuclear complex.

As just demonstrated, from 2000 to 2008, the legitimacy problem continued to intertwine with nuclear politics. Investment in China and local high tech industrial parks rose with unprecedented pace during Chen’s presidency, however, the DPP could not rid itself of its ‘isolationist’, ‘populist’, ‘irrational’ (usually linked to its anti-nuclear record), and ‘anti-business’ image. Also, after President Chen’s crisis in 2001, most of

37 Taipower attributed the delay to technical problems, see Chapter 4. 38 According to DPP legislator Tien Chiu-chin, contractors of the fourth nuclear complex were backed up by many political leaders (Chang, 2014).

87 DPP leaders remained silent on the issue of the fourth nuclear power plant, one for which they did not want to risk their political reputations. During President Chen’s second term (2004-2008), a corruption scandal became the last straw for the DPP in the 2008 elections. That year the KMT achieved total victory in both the legislative election (the KMT: 71; the DPP: 27) and the presidential elections. The new President Ma Ying-jeou was held in high esteem for his promises to revive the economy and to complete the fourth nuclear complex as soon as possible.39

3.3.3 Nuclear Politics in Taiwan (2009-2014) President Ma Ying-jeou, a major conservative leader in the KMT, quickly restored authoritarian measures in the state apparatus after he took office in May 2008 (see Chapter 5). Facing the 2008 global financial crisis, Ma argued that conducting more business with China and creating the fourth nuclear complex were necessary to save the economy. In September 2009, the KMT cabinet approved another $1.3 billion for the fourth nuclear project (to be reviewed by the Legislative Yuan annually). The total budget of the project had now reached $9.5 billion and operations had been rescheduled to start December 2011.

Accidents at the construction site increased from 2010 onward (details are presented in Chapter 4). In January 2011, the Taipower (again) rescheduled the operation date. Two months later, on March 11, 2011, the earthquake and tsunami that led to reactor melt-downs at Fukushima Daiichi in Japan shocked Taiwanese society and caused a revival of the anti-nuclear movement in the public sphere.

Under these circumstances, DPP presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen

39 The People First Party and Taiwan Solidary Union were thus marginalized in 2008.

88 proposed the ‘2025 no-nuclear homeland’ program in the 2012 presidential election. This program aimed to phase out all nuclear power in Taiwan by 2025. Tsai Ing-wen meant to complete the construction of the fourth nuclear complex but no allow it to enter into commercial operation. However, President Ma was reelected in March 2012 and maintained his pro-fourth nuclear complex position. President Ma proposed that the fourth nuclear power project should get online by 2016 and the first nuclear power plant can be decommissioned earlier than original schedule (Yang, Tsai & Hsu, 2011). During the campaign, the KMT cabinet claimed that without the fourth nuclear complex, Taiwan would be short of electricity for at least a third of the year in 2015 (Liu, 2011).

In May 2012, two Taipower officials were arrested because of suspected corruption related to parts purchased for the fourth nuclear power plant (Lin and Lin, 2012; Wang, 2012). Although Taipower claimed that all the questionable parts had passed the tests set forth by the AEC, this case triggered questions in the minds of the public. In October 2012, the AEC found that some circuits in the fourth nuclear complexes were installed incorrectly due to human errors. This scandal further increased the distrust among the public (Lee, 2012). By the end of 2012, some senior KMT politicians also showed concern about the quality of the fourth nuclear power plant. In December, DPP legislators proposed to delete the annual budget of the fourth nuclear but failed by the vote of 45:47. Facing questions about their votes, some KMT legislators claimed they did not believe in the safety of the fourth nuclear complex but had to vote according to the command of the party. Some claimed that they ‘accidently’ voted to support the fourth nuclear; most blamed that former President Chen had not finished the fourth nuclear during his 2000-2008 presidency but that the project needed to be completed (Chang, Wu, & Chen, 2013).

A March 2013 poll showed that 34.7% of respondents agreed to terminate the

89 fourth nuclear project and only 23.1% supported the project (16.6% had no opinion). Just over 23% agreed to suspend the construction for a safety inspection or a referendum (Taiwan Indicators Survey Research, 2013). Even though the KMT promised to hold a referendum on the fourth nuclear project, it justified the need for the plant from the standpoint of economic growth and carbon reduction. In particular, the KMT argued that the sunk cost of the fourth nuclear complex made it too costly to terminate the project. In January 2013, the Minister of Economic Affairs asserted that electricity prices would increase by 40% if the construction of the fourth nuclear stopped. “It is based on careful calculation, I am not bluffing” (quoted in Wang, 2013). In addition, Taipower requested another budgetary increase for the construction of the fourth nuclear complex in March 2013, raising the total budget, if passed, to about $11 billion.

Another poll conducted in the same month showed that 54% of the 1,071 participants were willing to terminate the fourth nuclear complex and only 11% believed that the government and the Taipower were capable of managing it (Fang, 2013). In addition, 57% of participants did not agree with President Ma’s idea to “run the fourth nuclear when the safety is 100% guaranteed [by international experts]” (Fang, 2013). A poll conducted by the government in April 2013 showed that 38.8% of the 1,079 participants insisted on terminating the fourth nuclear project no matter if it was guaranteed safe, 54.4% wanted to operate the fourth nuclear complex once safety was 100% guaranteed, and 68.2% wanted to hold a referendum on the fourth nuclear power plant (Hsieh, 2013). Under the increasing anti-nuclear circumstance, some senior KMT politicians showed hesitance about the fourth nuclear project (see Chapter 5). On April 12, 2013, the Pan-green camp proposed to terminate the fourth nuclear but the proposal failed by the vote of 46:53 in the Legislative Yuan (Chen, 2013).

On June 3, 2013, President Ma further pointed out, “Base load powers

90 (nuclear and coal power) are leading roles . . . renewable energies are merely clowns” (quoted in Zhuang, 2013). On August 2, 2013, a KMT legislator initiated a referendum with the subject, “Do you agree to terminate the construction and operation of the fourth nuclear complex?” in the Legislative Yuan.40 The KMT’s proposal not only provoked the ire of environmentalists who hit the streets again in protest, but also caused a fight to break out between legislators of the KMT and the DPP, the latter of whom paralyzed the Legislative Yuan by throwing punches and water bottles (“Taiwan vote on nuclear complex sparks brawl”, 2013). The KMT’s proposal of a referendum was blocked in the Legislative Yuan. At the time, the marginalized New Party and the People First Party also expressed opposition to the KMT’s proposal. They claimed that the crux of the fourth nuclear power plant was the safety issue, thus, the fate of the fourth nuclear complex should be dependent on the opinion of nuclear experts rather than a national referendum.

At the same time, anther internal conflict shook the KMT’s legitimacy. In

September, without legal evidence, President Ma accused another KMT leader, Wang Jin-pyng, the legislative speaker, of influence peddling. President Ma then tried to remove Wang from the position by revoking Wang’s KMT membership. The conflict between Ma and Wang was believed to be due to their disagreement on the fourth nuclear power plant and Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement (CSSTA), a proposed economic treaty which aimed to further integrate Taiwan into ‘One China market’. CSSTA brought about opposition from many NGOs (see Chapter 5). For President Ma, producing commodities for the Chinese market, then unification, provided the only legitimate pathway for Taiwan’s future, and nuclear power was embedded in this future through the cheap nuclear energy Taipower promised. While legislators held KMT’s proposal of a nuclear referendum because of the conflict between Ma and Wang emerged. In

40 According to the Referendum Act, if the turnout was less than 50%, the referendum was considered invalid, which would mean that construction and operation would continue.

91 November 2013, President Ma claimed that if a nuclear crisis occurred, the government would close and seal the reactors immediately before the melt-down, thus there would be no radioactive leakages in Taiwan. Ma’s declaration could not convince anti-nuclear side (Tang, 2013).

In January 2014, a legislator from the marginalized Taiwan Solidarity Union proposed to terminate the fourth nuclear project in the Legislative Yuan, but the proposal failed by a vote of 47:58 (Chen, 2014). In addition, on March 9, 2014, the Minister of Economic Affairs said that fuel rods could be installed in the reactor of the fourth nuclear complex without a referendum, but the minister promised that the commercial operation would remain dependent upon a national referendum. This declaration again irritated many environmental groups which believed nuclear risks or crises could happen once the nuclear reactions began at the plant.

Finally, the Sunflower Movement, which aimed to protest the ‘passage’ of the review of CSSTA in the Legislative Yuan without due process, was the straw which shattered the KMT’s aura of legitimacy. On March 18, 2014 students and NGOs, including anti-nuclear activists, occupied the Legislative Yuan and nearby blocks for more than three weeks. A series of anti-nuclear protests followed in the footsteps of the

Sunflower Movement in April (“Clashes as anti-nuclear protests”, 2014), and was accompanied with the hunger strike of Lin Yi-hsiung, former chairman of the DPP.

Partially thanks to the social influence of Lin, major KMT leaders softened their position on the fourth nuclear power plant, resulting in the halt of the project in May 2014.41

41 A poll few days before the Sunflower Movement showed 33.2% agreed to terminate the fourth nuclear project directly and 26.2 % agreed to suspend the construction for a safety inspection or a referendum (Taiwan Indicators Survey Research, 2014).

92 The KMT cabinet promised that the fourth nuclear project would not restart until a national referendum passes. This event would mark a milestone of the nuclear politics in Taiwan. The Economist prophesized, “More and more, Taiwan’s future could be decided on the streets” (quoted in The Economist, 2014/5/3). In this respect, the anti- nuclear activists, along with other NGOs, rather than the DPP, delivered the final blow to the fourth nuclear project and state (domestic) legitimacy. The KMT also has suffered historical fiasco in all the national elections until today (2016). The new President, Tsai,

Ing-wen from the DPP, who took the office in May 2016, promised to phase out all nuclear power in Taiwan by 2025.

3.4 Conclusion This chapter presented how legitimacy problems intertwined with anti- nuclear partisan politics in Taiwan’s history of nuclear power development. At the beginning nuclear power was used by the KMT to foster the state legitimacy. In the following decades, sometimes the ‘nuclear card’ was used to dismiss the legitimacy of a ruling party and sometimes the legitimation crises of ruling parties—usually related to other political controversies—created opportunities for anti-nuclear politics.

In the beginning, in the political system, the validity of Taiwan’s state legitimacy was crippled after the U.N. crisis in 1971. Nuclear power was promoted by the KMT as a progressive symbol to strengthen the loyalty of the public and embedded into the country’s developmental strategy. As an authoritarian party, the ‘progressive’ image of the government was a major strategy for securing the KMT’s legitimacy under the wave of democracy that took place in the 1980s and 1990s. Second, in the economic system, the KMT justified the use of nuclear power as a way to foster economic growth—a justification that appeared valid in the aftermath of the 1973 oil crisis, the 1998 Asia Financial crisis, the 2000 Dot-com crash, and the 2008 global financial crisis.

93 Economic crisis is a persistent tendency in advanced capitalism (see Chapter 2), thereby allowing the KMT to proclaim nuclear power as a solution for saving the economy in the long term. As discussed, all KMT presidents from Chiang Kai-shek onward firmly supported nuclear power while in office. In addition, for political leaders, fostering the relationship with the United States through nuclear business was a practical policy for securing Taiwan’s state legitimacy, especially after the United States ended the official relationship with R.O.C. in 1979. After 2000, nuclear power was promoted as a crux to save economy facing the challenges of globalization.

The DPP, which had a better relationship with environmental groups, played the ‘nuclear card’ to attack the KMT’s authoritarianism during the 1980’s wave of democracy. However, the DPP itself was also not immune to the legitimation crisis. President Chen was beleaguered for DPP’s Taiwanese state legitimacy position which provoked China, and the Pan-blue coalition used the ‘nuclear card’ to further cripple

Chen’s and the DPP’s legitimacy during the 2000-2001 nuclear debate.

The political struggles between the Pan-green and Pan-blue coalitions over DPP’s ‘Taiwanized R.O.C. legitimacy’ and nuclear power became the most significant characteristic of Chen’s presidency (2000-2008). While many anti-nuclear activists regarded the DPP as an opportunist party because it did not take meaningful action to stop the fourth nuclear project. Furthermore, after Chen’s failure in the 2001 nuclear debate, nuclear power was portrayed by both the KMT and DPP as a solution to globalization because of the cheap electricity it promised.

According to Ho (2014), this may be the main reason that the third sector (civil society), including environmental groups, became the engine for anti-nuclear politics during President Ma’s presidency. After failing to stop the fourth nuclear project

94 in 2001, the Pan-green coalition did little to advance anti-nuclear politics in the Legislative Yuan.

On the other hand, Lin Yi-hsiung, a former chairman of the DPP, and others promoted a more reasonable Referendum Act. They simultaneously aimed to challenge President Ma’s economic policies and the fourth nuclear complex. Through this strategy Lin and other activists maintained the anti-nuclear discourse in the public sphere and cultivated the younger generation for anti-nuclear career (see Chapter 5).

Moreover, the Fukushima crisis triggered abundant discussion on nuclear power in Taiwan’s public sphere. Primarily thanks to the work of NGOs, the public in Taiwan received more information about nuclear risk in the post-Fukushima era, including the updated discourse about nuclear accidents in the Taiwanese context. As mentioned above, the polls after the Fukushima crisis moved toward anti-nuclear over time. In the next Chapter, I discuss several nuclear accidents in Taiwan’s context. I also describe the pattern of thinking about nuclear management along with these accidents in past decades.

Figure 3-1 The locations of three existing nuclear complexes and the halted fourth (Longman) nuclear complex. Source: World Nuclear Association (n.d.), modified by the author.

Figure 3-2 Map of Taiwan (Lan Yu is Orchid Island). Source: Central Intelligence Agency, 2016

Table 3-1 Operating Taiwan nuclear complexes Nuclear Licensed units type MWe gross MWe net Start up* Complex to 1 Chinsan 1 BWR 636 604 1978 2018 1 Chinsan 2 BWR 636 604 1979 2019 2 Kuosheng 1 BWR 985 948 1981 2021 2 Kuosheng 2 BWR 985 948 1983 2023 3 Maanshan 1 PWR 951 900 1984 2024 3 Maanshan 2 PWR 951 923 1985 2025 Total (6) reactors 4927 MWe net Source: World Nuclear Association (2016), modified by the author.

Table 3-2 Seats of major parties in the Legislative Yuan

Name of the Party 1992 199 199 200 200 200 201 5 8 1 4 8 2

Kuomintang (Chinese 95 85 123 68 79 81 64 Nationalist Party)

Democratic Progressive 51 54 70 87 89 27 40 Party

New Party NA 21 11 1 1 0 0

People First Party NA NA NA 46 34 1 3

Taiwan Solidarity Union NA NA NA 13 12 0 3

others 15 4 21 10 10 4 3

Total seats 161 164 225 225 225 113 113

97 Table 3-3 Ten Major Construction Projects and Cost Cost (NT billion Construction dollars) National High Way No. 1 48.0 China Shipbuilding Corporation (CSBC) 36.9 Shipyard, Kaohsiung The first Nuclear power plant 29.5 Electrification of Western 22.4

Line railway Oil refinery and industrial park 20.3 Chiang Kai-shek International 10.3 Airport China Steel factory 8.4 Su-ao Port 7.9

North-Link Line railway 6.4 Port of Taichung 5.5 Total cost 195.6

Table 3-4 Twelve Major Construction Projects and Cost Cost (NT billion Construction dollars) The second and third nuclear complexes 110 Expansion of China Steel factory 51 Public housing 43 Expansion of Port of Taichung 17 South-link Line and East Link Line 7.9 railway Repairs and building of dykes 2.3 Improvement of highway in South Taiwan 2 Improvement of iragration systems 1.4 Creating Agricultural Funding 1 Improvement of Highway in Kaohsiung NA and Pingtung Central Cross-Island Highway NA Creating Cultural centers in each county NA (no overall plan) Total cost 235.6+

98 Table 3-5 Major political events about NNP4 Time Event

May 1980 The KMT cabinet proposed NNP4

May 1985 The KMT cabinet halted the NNP4

April 1986 Chernobyl Crisis occurred The Legislative Yuan July 1986 froze the budget of NNP4

The DPP magistrate of Taipei County tried to tear down the May 1991 construction on NNP4 site

September The AEC passed the environmental impact assessment of NNP4 1991

June 1992 The Legislative Yuan unfroze the budget of NNP4

The Legislative Yuan passed 7-years budget, 5.65 billion U.S. dollars July 1994 of NNP4

May 1996 The DPP and the New Party blocked NNP4 in the Legislative Yuan

October 1996 The KMT passed the restart of NNP4 in the Legislative Yuan

March 2000 Chen Shui-bian from the DPP won the presidential election

May 2000 The DPP cabinet launched the reevaluation of NNP4

September The reevaluation ended 2000 without a clear position on NNP4

The DPP cabinet October 2000 declared to terminate NNP4

99 November The Legislative Yuan impeached DPP prime minister, Chang Chun- 2000 hsiung

The Legislative Yuan January 2001 passed the restart of NNP4

May 2003 The DPP cabinet advocated a national referendum on NNP4

December The Referendum Act 2003 was passed, but no national nuclear referendum was ever held

August 2006 The DPP cabinet raised the budget of NNP4 to 7 billion of U.S. dollars

September The KMT cabinet raised the budget of NNP4 to 9.5 billion of U.S. 2009 dollars

March 2011 The Fukushima crisis occurred

February 2013 The KMT cabinet promised to hold a national referendum on NNP4

KMT's manipulated NNP4 referendum proposal August 2013 was blocked in the Legislative Yuan

Sunflower Movement March 2014 broke out

A former DPP chairman, Lin Yi-hsiung, started a hunger strike, along April 2014 with anti-nuclear protests

The KMT cabinet declared April 2014 to halt NNP4

100 Chapter 4

NUCLEAR ACCIDENTS IN TAIWAN42

4.1 Introduction: The Nuclear Accidents in Taiwan In this Chapter, I shift focus to discuss several of the nuclear accidents that occurred within the Taiwanese context. As mentioned earlier, nuclear accidents triggered the public to question the value of nuclear power. This questioning, in turn, raised new concerns about state legitimacy.

Specifically, state legitimacy came to be indirectly challenged when people realized that the government cannot manage nuclear power (see Chapter 2). Nuclear accidents, unlike other forms of pollution, have a lasting impact due to the long half-life of radioactive materials. From Beck’s perspective (see Chapter 2), the KMT’s legitimation crisis in 2014 can be viewed as a side effect of the mismanagement of nuclear accidents, which strengthen the anti-nuclear position in the post-Fukushima era. In this Chapter, I divide my discussion on nuclear accidents into two phases: before and after 2014, the year the fourth nuclear complex was halted.

As discussed in Chapter 2, Habermas and Beck argue that the political system in the modern state must intervene in the economic system under the principle of instrumental rationality. The principles of RAP (see Chapter 2) provide a detailed explanation of this instrumental rationality, which can be seen in how the state, AEC, and Taipower responded to (or did not respond to) accidents that occurred at nuclear

42 In this research, I use the term ‘accidents’ to refer to all nuclear events included in the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES). According to the International Atomic Energy Agency (2013), only nuclear events above level 4 are classified as ‘accidents’. However, from the perspective of Beck’s risk society theory (see Chapter 2), all nuclear events have the potential to create mega-risk.

101 complexes over the years.

Section 4.2 describes several non-operational accidents in Taiwan. In section 4.3, I describe accidents in three existing nuclear complexes and the unfinished fourth nuclear complex. In section 4.4. I summarize the characteristics of these accidents for the state and modern institutions to illustrate the elements embedded in Taiwan’s nuclear risk management. Despite a record of persistent nuclear accidents, the public mostly supported nuclear power throughout 1980s until the 2011 Japanese Fukushima nuclear accident as I discussed in Chapter 3.

4.2 Non-Operational Nuclear Accidents in Taiwan 4.2.1 Nuclear Waste Disposal and Indigenous Peoples43 In the 1970s, the Taipower selected Orchid Island, a small island located around 72 kilometers from the south east Taiwan coast (See Figure 3-1), as the disposal site for its low-level radioactive waste (Economic Daily News, 1975, July 14). Taipower

had selected Orchid Island as its disposal site with the intention of later dumping the stored waste into the ocean (Lin, 2016). That never occurred thanks to the U.N., which enforced the Protocol for the Protection of the Mediterranean Sea against Pollution from Land-Based Sources in 1983. However, neither Taipower nor the government told the islanders, the Tao people, one of the aboriginal groups in Taiwan, the truth about the disposal site, instead claiming that it would be used for a fish canning factory.44

Moreover, most Tao knew nothing of ‘nuclear waste’ at the time. The Tao only

discovered the truth when construction of the facility had almost finished.

43 Generally speaking, most Taiwanese have indigenous ancestors in their lineage. In this research, I use the term ‘indigenous peoples’ to signify the indigenous peoples officially recognized by Taiwanese government. By 1994, indigenous people were legally registered as ‘Compatriots in the Mountains’, although many of them did not live in the mountains. Indigenous people occupied about 1-2% of population after 1949. 44 Tao people were called Yami people before 1998. The name Yami was used by a Japanese researcher in the 19th century. In fact, the government did release the information about nuclear disposal site to the media in the 1970s, but apparently many Tao people received false information from local officials.

102 The disposal of low level radioactive waste on Orchid Island began in 1982, the same year it was outfitted with a modern electric system. According to Tu (2012), the government explained to Tao students: “electricity comes with nuclear waste, so nuclear waste is a good thing”. But under the wave of anti-nuclear sentiment from the mid-1980s (see Chapters 3 and 5), some of the Tao people also mobilized protests. Through the effort of activists, more and more Tao people realized the danger and risks brought by nuclear waste. Orchid Island ceased to be a disposal site for nuclear waste in

1996 when hundreds of angry Tao protestors blocked the shipment at the port (Wang and Chen, 2012).

After a long struggle and a large protest in 2002, the DPP cabinet established the ‘Removal of Nuclear Disposal Site Commission’ to work with the Taipower to plan for the transfer of 100,000 barrels of radioactive waste that had been stored on Orchid Island to a final disposal site. Taipower promised to remove nuclear

waste in four years. As of 2016, no residents elsewhere in Taiwan have agreed to accept the radioactive waste. Thus, 100,000 barrels of radioactive waste stay on Orchid Island (“President to visit Orchid Island”, 2016).

During inspections of 2010 and 2011, the Control Yuan reported that more

than 60,000 (out of a total of 100,000) barrels of the nuclear waste were damaged. Even so, Taipower claimed that the disposal site has not caused negative health or

environmental impacts. The radioactive isotope Colbalt-60 (60Co) was also detected on Orchid Island during the past few years.45 The Control Yuan identified human errors and negligence of AEC and Taipower on the disposal site (Gau and Zhao, 2012. However, Taipower asserted that the radiation was below the legal safety limit and thus

45 60Co is a synthetic radioactive isotope of cobalt with a half-life of 5.2714 years. It is produced artificially in nuclear reactors.

103 posed no threat to human health and the environment.

In November 2012, two Japanese scholars detected high levels of radiation on Orchid Island. Also in 2012, photos and videos showed that workers were not wearing protective clothing when performing inspection and maintenance at the disposal site (Chung, 2012; Gau and Zhao, 2012). Those photos and videos also documented problems with the inspection that could cause leaks of radioactive materials. Although

the AEC admitted human error was involved, the government asserted that no harm was done to human health or the environment. However, Tao people pointed out that they saw liquid leaking on the disposal site and found newly deformed crops (yams) on the island (Lin, 2014).

According to Taiwan’s Indigenous Peoples Basic Law passed in 2005, “The government may not store toxic materials in indigenous peoples’ regions in contrary to

the will of indigenous peoples” (Article 31). Guan Xiao-Rong, a photographer who supported the Tao people for decades, quoted a governmental official as saying, “They [the Tao people] protested when we built the port, too! At that time we used military force! They are too irrational to communicate with! Frankly speaking, is anywhere better than here [Orchid Island] for nuclear waste?” (Guan, 1991). The nuclear waste on

Orchid Island will not be removed until another disposal site is built. Until this happens, the Tao will continue living with nuclear waste (Hsu, 2016). Moreover, all potential

alternative sites have been located on the lands of indigenous people (Legislative Yuan Official Gazette Department, 2015: 450); the environmental injustice to Taiwan indigenous people is further analyzed in Chapter 6.

As discussed in Chapter 2, environmental concerns and the rights of the Tao people were excluded from decision-making under the RAP. In addition, nuclear

104 proponents tried to exclude environmental and indigenous values from nuclear debates. For example, KMT prime minister Jiang Yi-huah stated, “the government is highly concerned about the quality of the fourth nuclear power plant like all citizens, but some people view the safety of the fourth nuclear complex as a problem of value and belief […] the government hopes a referendum on the fourth nuclear power plant can exclude the conflicts between parties and ideologies” (Legislative Yuan Official Gazette Department, 2013b: 31-32).

4.2.2 Waste Metals and Radioactive Buildings In March 1982, the first nuclear complex dumped some nuclear waste in a landfill in Taipei County without arousing too much public attention (Legislative Yuan Official Gazette Department, 2015: 268), because many of the public did not have nuclear knowledge at the time (see Chapter 3). In March 1988, an employee of Taipower revealed that the company had tried to sell about 80,000 copper waste parts

(tubes) from the first nuclear complex without notifying the AEC. After first denying that they had tried to sell the parts, Taipower asserted that the waste copper parts were actually being ‘cleaned’ in a ‘workshop’, which turned out to be a tattered metal house that lacked qualified devices which could ‘clean’ the radioactive material (Fang, 1991; Lin, 2014). It was reported that at least half of these ‘cleaned parts’ had disappeared after an inspection from the AEC. Moreover, a leaked document from the Taipower suggested Taipower planned to reuse the ‘cleaned’ copper (Fang, 1991; Legislative

Yuan Official Gazette Department, 2015: 268). This ‘cleaned copper’ accident incited public panic, not only because people believed that radioactive materials could leak into the environment while the copper was being ‘cleaned’—in reality it was being ground in preparation for resale—but also that this waste copper could be repackaged into any kind of product after it had been sold to recyclers.

105 In April 1988, it was reported that Taipower had in fact sold waste metal parts from the second nuclear complex without notifying the AEC. According to a leaked document, at least 250,000 tons of uninspected waste metal parts had been sold each year in 1984 and 1987. Under public and legislative pressure (Fang, 1991), Taipower eventually admitted that waste metal parts from all three existing nuclear complexes had been sold to recyclers. Even so, the company claimed that all waste metals had been ‘cleaned’ and that their radiation levels fell under acceptable limits

(Fang, 1991; Wang, 1996). It was further revealed that waste metal parts from U.S. nuclear complexes had been imported to Taiwan, but the AEC denied any knowledge of this (Fang, 1991).

In May 1988, the Consumers Foundation sued the directors and vice directors of all three nuclear power plants for violating the Atomic Energy Law for illegally selling nuclear waste materials. However, the prosecutor decided not to prosecute, convinced by Taipower that these ‘waste metal parts’ were not ‘radioactive materials’, even though Taipower admitted that some of waste metals were sold without radioactive inspection (Fang, 1991). Overall, the prosecutor indicated that around 1,000 tons of waste metals had been sold to recyclers (Fang, 1991). Eventually, with the report of ‘radioactive buildings’, the public began to piece together what happened (AEC,

1995; Lee, et al., 2015).

In 1983, Taipower and AEC found radioactive steel in a half-finished building in Taipei (Wang, 1996). The building was torn down immediately without informing the public. However, a leaked document indicated that officials in charge of this situation in Taipower did not recall or monitor the radioactive steel (Wang, 1996). Rather, officials did not take any action in 1983 even after they identified the supplier of the contaminated steel (Wang, 1996). Ultimately, no one was held responsible for this

106 ‘accident’, which was eventually reported by the media in 1988. While the public paid little attention to this event, and AEC claimed that all the contaminated steel had been recovered from the market (Bih and Kuo, 1999), it was later confirmed that some of the contaminated steel disappeared. The AEC had buried the steel in farm land without any monitoring or management (Wang, 1996).

The media unveiled the first ‘radioactive building’ (contaminated by 60Co),

Ming-sheng Mansion, in 1992.46 Although officials in the AEC discovered Ming-sheng Mansion was contaminated by radioactive steel in 1985 (and also found the supplier, which purchased waste steel from Taipower), they decided to cover-up the truth. According to Wang (1996), at least 22 tons of radioactive steel were sold by the same steel company, and Wang found the leaked document of the AEC indicated that the source of the radioactive steel may be waste metals sold by the nuclear complexes. The AEC officially denied the 60Co in the radioactive steel had anything to do with nuclear complexes, claiming instead that the 60Co came from missing radioactive shells the Army used for training purposes (AEC, 1995a). When the Army found the missing radioactive shells in its facilities in 1998 (Lee, 1998a), the AEC did not update its explanation and did not try to investigate more potential contaminated buildings (AEC, 1995). Instead, it claimed that all of the radioactive buildings had been built between

1982 and 1984 and used materials from only a few steel makers (AEC, 1995). Thus, the Council focused its investigation exclusively on those buildings (Liu, et al. 2011).

However, more radioactive buildings were built after 1984 (Lee, 1998b): around 300 additional radioactive buildings were found, including apartments, commercial buildings, elementary schools, and kindergartens. Radiation-contaminated metals were discovered in the beam columns as well as in the metal frames of windows and doors.

46 I personally lived in Ming-sheng Mansion with my family for 9 years, and Ming-sheng Mansion became the first well-known radioactive building in Taiwan (Liu, et al., 2015).

107 According to the governmental conducted research, around 13,300 people have lived, worked, or studied in radioactive buildings to date (Liu, et al. 2011).

Residents in contaminated buildings were eligible for a free annual health examination if they had been exposed to more than 5 mSV/year,47 but in order to do so they had to grant governmental researchers access to their private medical records.48 In addition, there were subsidies available for relocating and remodeling, as well as housing tax deductions. However, not all the residents in the radioactive buildings received equal treatment— residents in Taipei City were given more resources than inhabitants from other cities (Jhan et al., 2001). Because the AEC did not admit responsibility for the radioactive buildings, the residents could only be offered subsidies rather than compensation from the government. Moreover, many inhabitants had to stay in their households because they could not afford to move. The prices at which the AEC offered to buy their households were lower than market price (Wang, 1996). In addition, there was no law enforcing radiation detection in potentially contaminated buildings. Some residents did not want their buildings to be tested because they were worried that their households could be devalued if they were found to contain radioactive steel. AEC claimed that for dwellings less than 5 mSV/year the health risk was extremely low and those buildings were acceptable for habitation. The AEC only purchased those dwellings with more than 15 mSV/year. Even though many residents did not agree with this ‘acceptable limit’, AEC has never changed this standard. Minister of the AEC Hsu

Yih-yun was quoted as saying, “if they [the residents] are not happy with the

47 According to World Nuclear Association (2012), residents near Three Mile Island received about 0.08 mSV/year around the time of the crisis.

48 The International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) set the acceptable radiation exposure limit for a member of the public at 1 mSv/year (0.001 Sv/year). "The sievert [Sv] is the special name for the SI unit of equivalent dose, effective dose, and operational dose quantities. The unit is joule per kilogram" (ICRP, 2007: 32).

108 governmental measures [toward radioactive buildings], they can move to other countries” (quoted in Wang, 1996: 269). Through the years, the AEC purchased 98 households out of a total 1,663 that received more than 15 mSv/year exposure (Legislative Yuan Official Gazette Department, 2016: 220).

There was no law in Taiwan banning the trading or leasing of radioactive households listed by the AEC. Also, there was no law forcing residents to relocate or rebuild the contaminated buildings. Most contaminated buildings stood and remained available on the market because it was hard for all residents to achieve a consensus on reconstruction (Legislative Yuan Official Gazette Department, 2016: 221). Some dwellings in contaminated buildings had little or no exposure to radiation, while others were highly contaminated. As of 2016, members of the public must do their homework before moving into a dwelling if they know or care about the side effects of radioactive buildings. The AEC itself tried to lease some contaminated households it purchased to governmental employees to demonstrate the ‘safety’ of radioactive buildings, but DPP legislators stopped this practice in 1993.

In an effort to help calm the public, a KMT legislator, Hung Hsiu-chu (elected as chairwoman of the KMT in 2016), asked Minister Hsu Yih-Yun to investigate the effects of radiation on beauty and anti-aging (Legislative Yuan Official Gazette Department, 1995).A study showed that males living in radioactive buildings had higher rates of leukemia than normal males, and females had higher rates of thyroid cancer than normal females (Hwang et al, 2006). All cancers combined were shown to exhibit significant exposure-dependent risks in individuals with the initial exposure occurring before 30 years of age, but not beyond this age. Findings also suggest that exposure to low-dose ionizing radiation of 60Co contaminated buildings may decrease fertility, especially in females (Lin et al., 2010). Another study showed that exposed

109 populations had significantly lower quality of life scores in physical, psychological, and social domains than the unexposed population (Yen et al., 2014). However, one study showed that the overall cancer rate of the residents in the contaminated buildings was below average (Liu et al., 2011: 13). In addition, Professor Chang Wu-shou conducted a research at National Yang Ming University for tracking more than 4,100 individuals in radioactive buildings, showing high incidence of cancer, but it was impossible to conclude there was a direct link between the cancer rate and the exposure to the radioactive buildings (Chiu, 2001).

In addition to health problems, some residents in Ming-sheng Mansion also had social problems with the neighborhood, because the neighborhood thought the protest banners which hung on the Ming-sheng Mansion would affect the area’s housing prices (Bih and Kuo, 1999). Also, some residents felt isolated because their neighbors avoided the Ming-sheng Mansion (Bih and Kuo, 1999). Many Ming-sheng residents rearranged their furniture to avoid hot spots in their dwellings. A family had to squeeze in the only one ‘clean room’ in their dwelling, and some residents had no choice but to take the high exposure every day because the hot spot was in their bathrooms. Under the high psychological pressure, the relationships among family members was also affected by the anxiety. Some residents suffered discrimination from their colleagues because their colleagues thought they were ‘contaminated’ (Bih and Kuo, 1999).

As discussed (see Chapter 2), the modern state relies on the accountability of rational institutions and knowledge (RAP). In each nuclear accident I discussed, the nuclear officials guaranteed that no harm was done to the environment or human, health based on the scientific data they collected. Also, through the scientific calculation, nuclear crises as the Chernobyl crisis and the Fukushima crisis were treated as events with extremely low probabilities of re-occurring, and thus were not worth worrying

110 about. Over time, Taiwan’s nuclear and economic officials successfully linked nuclear power with economic growth and objective scientific knowledge. The opposition to nuclear power was dismissed as anti-science and irrational in the long term. In this regard, nuclear power was endorsed through the modern rational knowledge system, which made it hard for laypeople to argue against. For example, in the case of Ming- sheng Mansion, AEC claimed that even in the highest radiation level dwelling, a resident can stay there for a year with the increase of 0.08% cancer rate thereby was acceptable. An AEC official further pointed out “Dangers exist everywhere […] people can be drowned or die from a fire […] we may die from a fire right now” (quoted in Bih and Kuo, 1999: 242).

Officials regarded the Tao people and the residents of radioactive buildings as people who have no right to complain about living with radiation (Guan, 1991; see also Bih and Kuo, 1999, Chapter 6). The government was not troubled by the fact that radiation-contaminated buildings were on the market, nor did they actively investigate potentially radioactive contaminated buildings. In this regard, some people may suffer side effects from these buildings as others profit from their sale. As discussed in Chapter 2, RAP often finds fairness and justice issues as problematic. In this regard, the Tao people and residents in Ming-Shen mansion eventually became ‘invisible’ in the nuclear society.

4.2.3 Nuclear Accidents Related to the Institute of Nuclear Energy Research In addition to radioactive buildings, ‘radioactive roads’ were found in Taoyuan County (reclassified as Taoyuan City in 2014) in the 1990s. Nuclear research was conducted at the Institute of Nuclear Energy Research (INER), a major nuclear institute besides of the National Chin-Hua University, in Longtan District (part of Taoyuan County). Prior to the ‘radioactive roads’ scandal, it had been revealed by the

111 media that the leaking of radioactive materials at INER might contaminate the drinking water of millions of people (Wang, 1996; He, 2015).

In August 1994, the mass media reported that a part of a road in Taoyuan County contained radioactive materials. The next month, the AEC conducted an inspection and claimed that the radioactive materials originated from the natural environment and that the radiation levels were under the acceptable limit one meter above of the road. The AEC’s explanation triggered further questions and caused citizens to panic because there was no way to walk one meter above the road. According to one environmental group’s studies, the radioactive level on the ground was 4.6 mSV/hr—76 times the level found on the average Taoyuan road (Wang, 1996).

The road samples collected by environmental activists were sent to Japan for further analysis in September 1994. As a result, 800 ppm of thorium dioxide, a by- product of uranium production, was discovered in the road’s gravel (Wang, 1996). Under immense public pressure, the Minister of the AEC admitted that the gravel under that road may have problems but avoided questions about thorium dioxide. The minister also reminded the public to calm down and said that there was nothing to panic about. According to Wang’s (1996) research, it is very likely that the contaminated gravel could be traced to Dahan Creek and the thorium dioxide to the nuclear research in INER.

INER’s nuclear waste disposal was mismanaged. As a result, a large amount of thorium dioxide (mixed with other minerals) might be buried in the riverbed of

112 Dahan Creek (Wang, 1996), which flows through Taoyuan and Taipei Counties.49 According to Wang (1996), at least 2,000 tons of waste minerals with thorium dioxide disappeared from INER in the mid-1990s. A leaked document published by Wang shows that some of the waste was sold to a construction company.

Wang’s (1996) study of the INER piqued the public’s interest. Not only was Dahan Creek the water supply for millions of people, the gravel in the creek may also have been used as construction material because Dahan Creek was a famous source for gravel plants. The AEC insisted that the thorium dioxide found in Dahan Creek came from naturally occurring radionuclides and had nothing to do with the government. By the end of 1995, seven radioactive roads were found in Taoyuan County, but the AEC claimed that the radioactive materials in the roads were from steel slags mixed with other construction materials. In other words, the AEC went back on its initial statement and asserted that the radionuclides found on the road were artificial radionuclides rather than natural radionuclides. But this updated explanation triggered more questions. How much contaminated steel, apart from the slags, was released to the market? Why did the AEC fail to prevent it? And how did these accidents happen? The government never answered these questions.

Furthermore, an official document that Wang (1996) found revealed seven explosions had occurred at INER during the transportation of nuclear waste in 1988-

1991. In the aftermath, radioactive water (water used to flush the accident area) was released to the nearby farmland and groundwater. Moreover, Wang discovered that the drainage system of the INER was not designed properly. Wang specifically pinpointed a

49 KMT could not conduct it through official channels even after the research projects had ended. Thus, after the United States forced the nuclear weapon project to close after the sudden death of Chiang Chin- kou in January 1988, there was no comprehensive plan for disposing of the nuclear waste.

113 subsurface pipe that bypassed the monitoring system. In 1995, the AEC reported that radioactive contamination had occurred near INER and Dahan Creek, but this report indicated that the environment was not harmed after the cleanup. The government also set a 2.3 hectare ‘environmental experiment zone’ [heavily contaminated zone], to constrain the leakage of radioactive materials. The AEC claimed that most of the radioactive materials were absorbed by the soil, thus nothing needed to be worried about. However, Wang revealed that tritium was found in a nearby water body, the

Shimen Reservoir, a famous sightseeing and seafood area (Wang, 1996). In addition, many residents nearby the contaminated zone drank underground water until 2000, the year AEC suggested those residents to install tap water (Legislative Yuan Official Gazette Department, 2013a: 480)

In 1995, the AEC also claimed that the drinking water from Dahan Creek was safe according to the monitoring system (AEC, 1995b). In addition, the AEC stated that it was not responsible for the illegal pipe and the leakage of the radioactive materials because INER was under the control of the Department of Defense before 1989. The Council claimed that it took over the institute in 1989 without being informed about the illegal pipe. Although in fact the same staff members worked in the same institute before and after 1989, the AEC claimed it had no legal responsibility for the accidents and errors. The AEC eventually admitted to the explosions (in 2014), but claimed that no harm had been done to the environment after the cleanup in the 1990s.

However, some researchers found that distribution of Caesium-137, a kind of artificial radioactive isotope in soil along Dahan Creek and residents nearby the contaminated area had nuclear anomalies in urinary exfoliated cells (Nabyvanets et al., 2000; Jen, et al., 2002).

Strangely, even though legislators have questioned accidents and nuclear

114 waste related to INER after the Fukushima crisis, until today (2016), the AEC has not provided detailed information to legislators and NGOs. For example, no one knows where the removed contaminated soil was stored and how was management performed, if any, about these soil. Also, there are 35 tons of uranium hexafluoride, which was purchased for research purpose, remained in INER but the final treatment of this material was not yet decided (Huang, 2016).

Dahan Creek accident did not triggered much discourse in the public sphere. Only few NGO members and legislators have probed into this issue (Legislative Yuan Official Gazette Department, 2014, 2015).

4.3 Accidents at Nuclear Power Plants 4.3.1 Accidents at Existing Nuclear complexes: 1980s-May 2014 In March 1986, the second reactor unit at the first nuclear complex achieved a world record for continuous operation at 417.5 days. To celebrate this achievement, the supplier of the reactor, General Electric, awarded each staff member with a new wallet. Two years later, the media revealed that radioactive materials had leaked into the air through the empty floating (in air) for at least 56 days in 1985 and several days in January 1986. Even though all employees in the plant were evacuated for about 10 days in January 1986, Taipower had not notified the AEC. In addition, most of the related documents and monitoring data had disappeared by the time the Control Yuan tried to investigate this case in 1988 (Fang, 1991). Leaked Taipower documents that were published by a journalist indicated that the radiation near the first nuclear complex was 50 times above the legal safe limit, and the radiation leakage may amount to more than what was released during the Three Mile Island Crisis, but Taipower did not notify local residents in 1986 (Fang, 1991). Eventually, the cabinet concluded that some radiation leakages did occur but no harm was done to the health or environment according to the

115 monitoring data, although it was confirmed that four out of five monitoring stations nearby the first nuclear complexes were out of order during the accident (Fang, 1991).

According to Fang (1991), Taipower officials were excited about creating a record for continuous operation, thus many of the scheduled maintenance and repairs of the second reactor were not performed properly. For example, even though many pipes and valves were worn or broken from long-term use, officials decided to do repairs without shutting down the reactor, as would normally have occurred. In March 1988, the cabinet concluded that no harm had been done to the environment or human health, and this accident did not trigger public attention (Fang, 1991).

According to the AEC, an October 1987 typhoon submerged part of the circuit system in the second nuclear complex. As a result, both of the nuclear reactors had to be shut down (Fang, 1991). Before the AEC figured out what happened during the flood, Taipower decided to resume operation of the reactors. An AEC inspector found that plant staff removed the monitor when they realized the radiation was above the legal limit (and operation of the reactors continued). According to Fang (1991), the inspector discovered as early as July 1987 that the monitoring system of the outlet had been illegally reprogrammed with a higher radiation limit than the legal value. The inspector reported being irritated by Taipower staff who tried to hide the logbook from him. In November, the inspector found the second plant again drained radioactive water into the ocean that exceeded the legal limit for radiation. As a result, no one knew how much radioactive water above the limit had drained into the ocean.

After the investigation, the AEC concluded that there was a problem with the cooling system design. Unfortunately, the supplier (GE) could not provide reliable replacements immediately. Parts supply issues resulted in more cooling system leakages

116 and reactor temperature abnormalities that were not entirely solved. As a result, a series of minor accidents occurred from 1986 to 1988 (Ma, 1985; Fang, 1991). Staff members had not been well trained to handle these minor accidents, resulting in additional errors that compounded the problems and created more leakages (Fang, 1991). However, officials in Taipower continued to be optimistic. In 1987, an official responded to the inspector of the AEC: “The situation was worse before…but no accident happened, so we are ok” (quoted in Fang, 1991: 142). As a result, minor accidents (and leakages) continued to occur in the second nuclear complex without public knowledge.

Meanwhile, the public’s attention was focused on the newly built third nuclear complex, which caught fire and exploded in July 1985. It took Taipower a year to repair the damage and triggered many questions about nuclear safety in the public sphere. Taipower finally demonstrated the explosion resulted from a design error of a high- pressure turbine. In 1988, another accident occurred in the third nuclear complex— the control rods failed to function properly. The AEC ordered the shutdown of both reactors and began its investigation. Some control rods were found severely cracked and deformed in September 1988 (Fang, 1991; AEC, 2012a). In April 1993, human error led to the leakage of about 5,000 gallons of radioactive water into the ocean from the third nuclear complex. The AEC concluded that no harm had been done to human beings or environment (AEC, 2000).

At the beginning, Westinghouse, the supplier, and Taipower denied that the control rods within the reactor, the most advanced model at the time, were of a flawed design. Westinghouse suspected that the accident was due to human error (Legislative Yuan Official Gazette Department, 2011: 246). Taipower officials argued that a restart was acceptable according to their own experimental data. The AEC concluded that the design of the control rods was problematic, and in December 1988, made an international

117 announcement to warn other countries about the risks of these control rods. The AEC refused to permit the restart of the third nuclear complex and requested Taipower to replace the problematic control rods (Fang, 1991; Legislative Yuan Official Gazette Department, 2011: 247). In response, officials in Taipower accused the Council of causing economic harm. This may have been the first severe conflict between Taipower and the AEC in history (Fang, 1991). Ultimately, the cabinet took the side of the Council and ordered the suspension of the third nuclear complex until the replacement of the current control rods. Eventually Westinghouse agreed with the conclusions of AEC. AEC nuclear officials were proud of their capacity to demonstrate the error of U.S. experts (Fang, 1991).

Minor accidents continued to plague the existing three nuclear power plants (Fang, 1991). However, the public focused more on the fourth nuclear complex controversy. As discussed in the previous chapter, the struggle over the fourth nuclear project was at the center of Taiwan’s partisan politics at the time.

Ironically, two months after President Chen Shui-bian’s failure in the fourth nuclear complex political conflict, a Fukushima-level accident almost occurred in the third nuclear complex, but the public was not aware of the severity (Wang, 2003). On

March 18, 2001, a reactor in the third nuclear complex went offline for two hours due to problems with the circuit system. As a result, the cooling system could not function and the temperature almost rose to the point of nuclear meltdown. Had this occurred, the core of the reactor would have been damaged from overheating. 50

During the blackout, two emergency generators, which were supposed to

50 In this case, the temperature of the reactor was only 20 Celsius (°C) degrees from the temperature of meltdown (Wang, 2003).

118 work in this situation, were both out of order. According to leaked information, some staff members were ready to run from the plant (Wang, 2003). Luckily, a spare generator, which was not in the original design, sparked at the last minute and the reactor cooled down. According to Wang (2003), this German generator was purchased mainly to improve diplomatic relations with Germany. The accident was classified as 3A level event under INES, (see note 1), becoming the most serious nuclear accident in Taiwan’s history.

After the investigation, the Control Yuan and AEC concluded that the cause of the failed circuit system was the seasonal salt fog in southern Taiwan combined with human error (Chao et al., 2001). However, a Taiwanese-born American expert, Chen Mo- shing, did not agree with this conclusion. Chen Mo-shing, who was invited by the DPP cabinet to participate in the investigation, pointed out that Taipower ignored the alarms a day before the accident. According to him, a negative sequence current from the power grid was the true cause of the accident and similar problems would occur in the future if this fundamental issue was not corrected (Wang, 2003). However, the DPP cabinet decided to close the case and resumed operation of the third nuclear complex. The government regarded this accident merely as a technical problem of the circuit system and did not look into the matter any further. It may have been the case that President

Chen Shui-bian did not dare to risk his political life by halting the restart of the third nuclear complex after he had just lost a fourth nuclear complex battle two months ago.

On June 12, 2009, the startup transformer in the third nuclear complex caught fire. Luckily, the reactors were not affected by the fire. After the investigation, AEC concluded the fire was due to water or moisture that had penetrated the surface insulation (AEC, 2012a). However, the public was upset by Taipower, which provided incomplete information in the aftermath. NGOs particularly questioned the management of the third

119 plant because of its poor record. As of 2016, at least 30 serious accidents, including a blackout event in 2001, have been reported (Citizen of the Earth Taiwan, 2015).

In March 2012, seven anchor bolts, used to fix the reactors to the base of the second power plant were found broken. Although all seven broken bolts were replaced in few months, environmental groups were troubled by the fact that no cause of this accident was found. Theoretically, the anchor bolts under the reactor should not break under any circumstances. These were the first recorded cases of broken nuclear reactor anchor bolts in the world (AEC, 2012b). Environmental groups asking to halt operation of the problematic reactor until further research could be conducted. Taipower attributed the broken bolts to environmental conditions, quality defects and errors during the original construction (AEC, 2012b). When environmental groups and a former technician who worked in the second nuclear complex questioned a recorded huge shaking of the reactor of unknown cause (Lee, 2012), Taipower responded that the seismometer was out of order and the data was from a false signal. As a result, the operation of the second nuclear complex continued. Also in 2012, the AEC also found cracks on the supporting structure of the No. 1 reactor of the second nuclear complex, yet concluded there was no need to worry. Even though more cracks were found in the following years, the AEC concluded no repair was required and scheduled the next ultrasound inspection after the decommissioning date in December 2021. In other words, the AEC suggested using only visual inspection of the cracks until the decommissioning of the reactor (Tang, 2016). In

2013, the AEC found that the No. 2 reactor in the third nuclear power plant lost connection with backup power for 84 days (from April to July) due to human error (Lee and Tang, 2013).

120 4.3.2 Accidents at Existing Nuclear complexes: Mid-2014 -2016 During the overhaul of the first nuclear complex in December 2014, a handle used to remove a set of fuel rods in the first reactor broke, the first recorded case of this model ever breaking in such a way. After the investigation, the AEC attributed the broken handle to quality defects in the handle itself, and the Council approved the restart of the first reactor. However, under pressure from environmental groups, the Legislature Yuan mandated that the AEC deliver a report to them before the reactor was restarted. The

Council has yet to deliver the report because the Legislative Yuan continues to avoid including it on the agenda. It was reported that the chairman of Taipower attempted to restart the problematic reactor without the permission of the Legislature Yuan in January 2016, but was stopped by the Minister of Economic Affairs (Wang, 2016).

In May 2016, a legislator revealed that an explosion occurred in the second nuclear power plant. However, Taipower and AEC argued there was no explosion but merely a ‘high temperature with compression’ accident. Even though the pictures showed some equipment had burned, the Taipower and the Council claimed that the safety of the nuclear reactors was not directly affected because this was just a minor accident caused by an normal electrical short-circuit in part of the circuit system (AEC, 2016a).

A subsequent poll in 2016 showed that 61% of the participants (citizens) agreed to continue with the operation of the current three nuclear complexes until their scheduled decommissioning. Only 16.8% agreed to close the current three nuclear complexes as soon as possible (Taiwan Indicators Survey Research, 2016). Ironically, a few months after this poll, the third nuclear complex caught fire due to the poor quality wiring and out of date circuit system. It was reported the wire which started the fire had not been replaced in the past 30 years. While Taipower claimed there was no fire but some damaged wires caused a false alarm. When the angry local government send

121 experts into the plant for investigation, the aftermath was already cleaned up and Taipower staff refused to let the experts take pictures (“Accidents due to 30 years old wire: safety crisis in the third nuclear complex”, 2016).

Moreover, in October 2016, the AEC finally admitted that the casks of the operating fuel rods in the second nuclear complex were cracking. Even though anti- nuclear activists questioned this problem and related leakages of radioactive materials for two years, the AEC and Taipower denied this problem until October 2016. In fact, nuclear officials even mocked the whistle blower on this issue for two years (Tang, 2016).

In summary, even though a series of nuclear accidents have surfaced over the years, nuclear power continued to be heralded as the backbone of Taiwan’s modernity and progress in the long term. Even the DPP, a party that established an anti-nuclear program, had to comply with the KMT decision on the fourth nuclear project after President Chen’s failure in 2001. Table 4-1 lists major operational accidents.

Table 4-1 Major Accidents at Existing Nuclear complexes Time (Year) Location Event Nuclear waste was March 1982 NPP1 dumped into a land fill High level radioactive 1985-1986 NPP1 leakages due to long operation July 1985 NPP3 An explosion occurred Part of circuit system October 1987 NPP2 was flooded November Radioactive pollution NPP2 1987 through draining

122 Control rods were September NPP3 deformed due to the 1988 design error Deformed fish was found July 1993 NNP2 nearby the coast No.1 reactor black out March 2001 NNP3 for 2 hours The startup transformer June 2009 NNP3 caught fire Seven anchor bolts under March 2012 NNP2 the reactors were broken April-July No.2 reactor lost spare NPP3 2013 power for 84 days The casks of the fuel 2014-2016 NPP2 rods in the second nuclear complex cracked May 2016 NPP2 An explosion occurred

4.3.3 The Unfinished Fourth Nuclear complex before May 2014 In addition to accidents that occurred at three nuclear complexes, the construction of the fourth nuclear complex, as discussed, may be the most dramatic of all. The construction was 93.76% completed before it was halted in May 2014. Many accidents occurred during the construction. I present the major accidents that occurred before May 2014 below.

In September 2008, a typhoon flood submerged part of the second reactor and caused a loss of about $0.6 million in the half-finished fourth nuclear complex.51 The water pumps which were supposed to discharge water were also submerged. In March 2010, the control room of the first reactor unit at the site caught fire. The fire not only burned part of the circuit system, it also caused a control room blackout. A blackout in control room can cause a nuclear meltdown in an operating nuclear complex. These

51 The construction of the forth nuclear complex began in 1999.

123 accidents caught the attention of NGOs because they were directly related to the nuclear reactors.

On May 27, 2010, an explosion occurred in the unfinished control room due to human error. On July 9, 2010, Taipower blamed the circuit system of the control room and insisted it had to be redesigned. In the same month, a human error was blamed for a blackout of the entire plant lasting 28 hours. The AEC admitted at the time that there was no evacuation plan for the fourth nuclear complex if a real nuclear accident happened. By the end of 2010, AEC found that the deployment of the whole circuit system (cables and wires) in the fourth plant was full of errors that had to be redone (Tang, 2010; Legislative Yuan Official Gazette Department, 2010: 224; GCAA, 2011).

After the investigation, the AEC concluded in March 2011 that Taipower illegally changed the original design provided by GE. This was the second time the

Council uncovered an illegal ‘redesign’ of the fourth plant. In total, the Council found about 1,536 parts, including parts near the reactors, which were built according to the ‘redesign’ by Taipower. However, the Council agreed to let GE review and help with changes, while not holding the company accountable for the safety of the redesigned plant. Although fined by the Council, Taipower justified the redesign by arguing that the original design had been spoiled by contractor mistakes and could not be recovered. Although environmental groups questioned the quality of a ‘redesigned’ nuclear complex, the Council endorsed continuing construction. Overall, 90.74% of the original design was changed (Legislative Yuan Official Gazette Department, 2010: 214). The Control Yuan also found that Taipower had purchased 324,000 unqualified transformers for the fourth nuclear complex from a supplier (Control Yuan, 2011). Also, it was reported by the media that a Taipower employee refused to approve problematic construction in the reactor area, but was forced by his supervisor to allow it to pass

124 quality inspection (Lu, 2011).

In 2012, the Control Yuan released an investigative report and a corrective report, identifying the administrative errors and negligence on the part of Taipower (Lin, Ma, Lee, Ma, & Chen, 2012). Moreover, the Control Yuan concluded that these had caused an unnecessary increase in the cost of the nuclear power plant. As I mentioned in Chapter 3, the total budget of the fourth nuclear complex increased to almost $10 billion when the construction was halted in 2014.

According to a Control Yuan report, a series of technical problems and related accidents in the fourth nuclear complex could be tracked back to 1995, the year Taipower awarded the bid to contractors. At the time, Taipower did not provide a ‘turn key’ bid to select one contractor as it did for existing three nuclear complexes. Instead, Taipower divided the construction into several bids. Because the related sub-bids were too complex to manage, Taipower had difficulty controlling the budget and suffered from endless technical problems and controversies with contractors— one U.S. consulting company even went bankrupt without finishing its job. Taipower had to increase the budget over time to fix the unexpected technical problems and errors, including those stemming from Taipower’s ‘redesign’. For example, in 2004, Taipower bought the control system of reactors from GE without coordinating with other suppliers. As a result, generators purchased from other suppliers could not function in GE system. Hence,

Taipower had to pay $6.43 million U.S. to GE to correct this oversight. In 2005, GE charged Taipower another $1.6 million U.S. because of the delay caused by other contractors. Later in 2010, Taipower again paid GE $10 million for errors and delays caused by Taipower itself (Lin, Ma, Lee, Ma, & Chen, 2012).

125 4.4 Conclusion From above accidents I presented, I conclude that Taiwan’s nuclear society contains following elements.

First, complexity: it is difficult to identify and quantify the casual links between the causes and effects. As I described, it would be difficult to identify if nuclear accidents had any impact on the environment and human health. For example, some the residents in the Ming-Sheng Mansion suffer from diseases, but it would be impossible for them to demonstrate their diseases were due to the radioactive parts of the building. The government can claim that some residents’ health problems may be due to alcohol, smoking, or sexual activities (Bih and Kuo, 1999: 210). Second, when scientific methods cannot solve problems of complexity, they cause uncertainties. Generally, probability is used for dealing with the uncertainties. For example, scientific experts use probability to calculate the safety of nuclear reactors or the frequency of earthquakes.

However, calculating probability contains uncertainty— the experts have to decide which factors to include in their calculations and probability of occurrence to assign to each. In this regard, the lack of knowledge, systematic error, and variability of targets can lead to more uncertainty in risk management. As a result, nuclear risk assessments would exclude those risks with little evidence or no evidence, or those that have not yet been thought of.

Third, the complexities and uncertainties of nuclear risk cause ambiguity in risk management. Ambiguity of the risk management in the case of Taipower and the AEC means that the experts have the power to decide the legitimate definition and methods for risk assessments and management. As I described, Taipower tried to use the problematic fuel rods with their own calculation of safety in 1987 although the AEC did not approve. Likewise, in the case of radioactive buildings, the AEC developed its own

126 method for determining radiation exposure, claiming that human beings would not stand near walls. In fact, some residents sat directly over hot spots beneath their toilets (Bih and Kuo, 1999), but the AEC did not consider them at risk.

In summary, the characteristics of nuclear risk caused immense difficulties in Taiwan’s nuclear risk management. Most of the time, the nuclear officials used to cover the cases until the media or whistle blowers disclosed more information to the public. For example, in the 2015 fire case in the third nuclear complex, which was identified as a minor event by Taipower, the third nuclear complex did not notify local people, who were panicked when they saw smoke on the plant at midnight. The irritated local Magistrate thus threatened to sue Taipower staff (Tsai, 2015). While the AEC claimed that according to the related law, Taipower had no obligation to notify local people even if there was any serious accident, not to mention minor accidents (AEC, 2015).

In this chapter I described major accidents in Taiwan’s nuclear industry from the 1980s to 2016. The historical evidence shows that even in the 1980s, the newly built nuclear complexes were full of problems and nuclear accidents persisted for 30 years. Under the RAP, Taiwan’s nuclear risk management obviously failed to prevent a series of accidents and failed to deal with the aftermath.

Although nuclear power persisted in Taiwan for decades, it also triggered significant opposition, which greatly built their argument on the evidence of nuclear accidents. In the next chapter, I present the anti-nuclear movement in Taiwan’s society. In Chapter 6, I use the framework I built in Chapter 2 to analyze how nuclear risk affected Taiwanese society and coevolved with (domestic) legitimacy problems. The three ideologies that support Taiwan’s nuclear RAP are analyzed in Chapter 6, too. I

127 also analyze why nuclear power was popular in Taiwan for a long time with its desperate record of accidents. I analyze how civil society responded to these risks and problems in the post Fukushima era.

128 Chapter 5

THE ANTI-NUCLEAR MOVEMENT IN TAIWAN

5.1 Introduction: The Anti-nuclear Movement in Taiwan In this chapter, I describe the history of Taiwan’s anti-nuclear movement, breaking it into three phases: 1987 – 2000, 2001 – 2011, and post-2011. Before Taiwan’s Martial Law was lifted in 1987, no real anti-nuclear movement existed. Most of the anti- nuclear authors tended to avoid sensitive political economic critiques, cautiously framing their writings as professional and scientific discussion (Ho, 2003; Lin, 2014). Keeping a low profile was certainly the habit of some scholars, but the low-key strategy also reflected the authoritarian political climate. As mentioned previously, Lin Jun-yi, a professor and pioneer of the anti-nuclear movement, was forced by the secret police to leave Taiwan in 1984 (Lin, 2014). Because the KMT government kept major mass media under heavy surveillance, underground political magazines served as important channels for the opposition (See Chapter 3). Through these independent channels, political activists could voice their political thoughts and demands, and cover news not reported elsewhere. Needless to say, the anti-nuclear writings of political activists focused on the political aspects of nuclear power. Tanwai magazines discussed nuclear risk and questioned the technocracy in nuclear policy-making and the hidden connection between nuclear power and the nuclear weapons that were being developed secretly. After the end of martial law era, anti-nuclear scholars of the Taiwan Environmental Protection Union

(TEPU) began to formally work with the newly established DPP. Throughout the first phase, the anti-nuclear movement was closely linked to the DPP and they criticized nuclear power through an anti-authoritarianism angle.

The second phase covers the years 2001 to 2011, the year of the Fukushima crisis. In this phase the future of the anti-nuclear movement looked bleak. I focus my

129 discussion on the Green Citizens’ Action Alliance (GCAA) and Nuke 4 Referendum Initiative Association (NRIA). The former was highly devoted to the empowerment of grassroots activists in Gongliao, the site of the fourth nuclear complex; the latter coordinated with the TEPU and greatly contributed to the birth of the Referendum Act and mobilized marches for a national referendum on the fourth nuclear complex.

The third phase lasted from the 2011 Fukushima crisis to May 2014, when the KMT cabinet declared it would halt construction of the fourth nuclear project and promised not to restart it without a national referendum. In the third phase, more and more members of the public perceived the nuclear (mega) risk during this phase, regardless of social class. In addition, civil groups, rather than the DPP, dominated Taiwan’s anti-nuclear politics.

5.2 Taiwan’s Anti-nuclear Movement, Phase I (1987-2000)

Under the wave of democracy and the end of Taiwan Martial Law, the Taiwan Environmental Protection Union (TEPU) was established in November 1987.52 The TEPU listed anti-nuclear as its major program and its members participated in almost every anti-nuclear protest held until 2000.

Activists in TEPU had deep relationships with the newly established DPP and participated in the DPP’s campaigns in the 1990s. In March 1988, Yanliao villagers near the fourth nuclear site established the Yanliao Anti-nuclear Self-help Association (YASA) as a branch of TEPU. I focus the discussion that follows on the activities of

52 TEPU did not legally register in the central government until the DPP won the presidency in 2000, because the KMT government did not agree with the title ‘TEPU’ without ‘Republic of China’ in it, as it may imply that Taiwan itself is a state and violate the Chinese ideology of the KMT (Ho, 2003).

130 these two groups because they worked closely together to challenge the fourth nuclear project, a project at the core of the partisan politics described in Chapter 3.

The TEPU also established close relationships with anti-KMT political activists in the 1980s, since all were suppressed by the KMT government. One DPP leader commented frankly: “In the past, we could mobilize people only by political issues. Now, we could do the same things by environmental issues” (quoted in Ho,

2003: 695). In some places, DPP politicians’ offices and local TEPU branches actually shared the same floor and staff. With the DPP's sponsorship, the TEPU's resource deficiency (i.e. financial resource), as a newly established environmental group, was partially relieved.

Beginning in the mid-1980s, scholars in the TEPU began to work with the political opposition and challenged the KMT authorities overtly (Professor Chang Kuo- lung, a senior member of TEPU, in Ho (2003)). The newly emergent anti-pollution protests, especially against DuPont in central Taiwan (1986-1987), convinced them of the need to integrate grassroots activism with scientific knowledge. Compared to the political activists or the DPP, local villagers in Gongliao were much more receptive to TEPU intellectuals. The local residents had a tradition of respecting scholars and held intellectuals in high esteem. The knowledge the intellectuals brought to the area conferred on the villagers’ power and authority they could then use to strengthen their subsequent anti-nuclear actions (Wei, 2016).

Although the KMT cabinet declared a halt to the fourth nuclear project in 1985, Taipower in fact never had suspended construction work at the designated site in Gongliao (Ho, 2003). Taipower staff had arranged a meeting at Aodi primary school to speak to Gomgliao residents about nuclear power. On March 1, 1988, concerned

131 villagers went to the seminar only to discover that it was no more than a party for attendees. Prizes included large electronic appliances, such as televisions and refrigerators. Taipower’s ‘generosity’ attracted many attendees. Yet issues such as safety, impacts on marine life, and land expropriation remained unaddressed. The following day, news spread in the national media that Gongliao villagers had warmly welcomed Taipower’s fourth nuclear power plant in their neighborhood. Irritated by Taipower’s deception, villagers decided to mobilize. Fifteen hundred attended the conference establishing the Yanliao Anti-nuclear Self-help Association (YASA), as a branch of TEPU. This alone sent a clear message that locals were prepared to organize to resist the state’s nuclear policy. On March 12, YASA organized its first public protest: burning Taipower gift calendars in front of the local Mazu Temple.53

In the 1989 local election, the TEPU aimed to challenge the KMT, and devised the slogan “Do not vote KMT for anti-nuclear”. In addition, the TEPU made a recommendation endorsed candidates who supported the environmental movement. In December 1989, DPP candidate Yu Ching, who was endorsed by the TEPU, became the first non-KMT magistrate to be elected in Taipei County. Anti-nuclear scholars often had expressed their anti-nuclear arguments at Yu’s rallies during the campaign. Yu also invited TEPU scholars participate on the environmental impact assessment committee for the fourth nuclear project (see Chapter 3). During Yu’s term, the TEPU coordinated with Taipei County to hold a series of anti-nuclear lectures in schools. Under this strong anti-nuclear pressure, the Council of Taipei County, at the time controlled by the KMT, decided to hold a referendum in the County about the fourth nuclear project. Moreover, for the first time, the Council passed a resolution to reject the fourth nuclear project in November 1990 (“No nuclear: Nationwide Anti-nuclear Marches”, 2014). This

53 Mazu is the Chinese patron goddess who is said to protect seafarers. She is also worshiped in Taiwan and other places in East/Southeast Asia.

132 resolution boosted the morale of anti-nuclear activists.

In May 1991, the TEPU mobilized the largest anti-nuclear protest since the 1980s. Approximately 10,000 people, including around 1,000 students, marched in Taipei and delivered the anti-nuclear petition to the presidential office. In September 1991, the Atomic Energy Council passed the result of the environmental impact assessment, the validity of the passage was questioned by the activists who argued that the AEC itself was not qualified to review the assessment because of its role in promoting nuclear power. The passage of the assessment was also controversial because anti-nuclear committee members did not attend the final meeting—the meeting lacked the quorum needed to pass the assessment.

TEPU activists and villagers in Gongliao built barricades on the site of the fourth nuclear complex on September 25, 1991 to disrupt construction. When police officers tried to demolish the barricades on October 13, the peaceful protest turned into a violent confrontation. The death of a police officer resulted in the KMT government and mainstream media spreading the word of “anti-nuclear violence”, charging that the anti- nuclear movement behaved like irrational, violent mob. Neither the KMT nor the DPP took responsibility for the tragedy, leaving the grassroots activists to bear the brunt of public criticism. The accident dampened the morale of anti-nuclear activists, particularly after two villagers were accused of murder and a total of seventeen villagers were sentenced for the October 13 event. After the event, Gongliao villagers also found themselves under close surveillance by the government (Liao, 1993: 112-130). As Shih Shin-Min, the first chairman of the TEPU, stated (TEPU Newsletter, 1992: 12):

We basically act peacefully and legally…we don’t want to see anyone suffering suppression from the state. It is a mishap that some accidents were out of our control…domestically, the punishment from the court will

133 have a bad impact on our movement and hurt the victims badly. Because in Taiwan the administration of justice is merely a tool of the rulers to suppress social movements.

In the months following the October 13 event, the TEPU avoided radical actions. However, in April 1992, the TEPU mobilized an anti-nuclear march in Taipei, and about 800 university professors signed a petition to show their support to TEPU. Moreover, from May 12 to June 3, 1992, the TEPU mobilized a hunger strike in front of the Legislative Yuan. More than 100 scholars joined this protest. Shih Shin-Min stated (quoted in Liao, 1993: 194-195):

Let a committee [in the Legislative Yuan] with merely 13 members to determine the fate of fourth nuclear power is actually dictatorship, not democracy. So we, as scholars and experts, have to confront this kind of ‘phony democracy’ … when people’s voices are erased by the rulers ... we have to stand with people … we urge Taiwanese people united together to block the budget and ask for a referendum on the fourth nuclear complex.

Despite this criticism, the Legislative Yuan unfroze the budget of the fourth nuclear project in June 1992 under the direct pressure of President Lee Teng-huei.

Under the Lee administration, the TEPU gradually adjusted its anti-nuclear discourse. By 1990, the TEPU viewed nuclear power in Taiwan as a link in the chain of the Western nuclear industry, which manipulated Taiwan’s energy pathway through the corrupt KMT police state and the technocracy in the political system. For example,

TEPU members believed that the United States promoted nuclear power in Taiwan as a way to save the U.S. nuclear industry, which was in deep trouble after the partial core meltdown at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania. When President Lee tried to unfreeze the budget of the fourth nuclear project after the martial law era, anti-pork-barrel politics began to dominate the TEPU’s anti-nuclear discourse. In a more democratic

134 environment, TEPU openly critiqued the corruption in the Taipower, arguing that the budget of the fourth nuclear would triple under the corrupt KMT (Liao, 1993: 143). Furthermore, the suppression of social movements dating back to the early 1990s became a focus (see Chapter 3), thus critiques on international nuclear political economy were gradually being phased out of the TEPU discourse.54 Critiques toward U.S. nuclear industry died down.

At the end of 1992, the DPP won about one-third of the seats in the Legislative Yuan. During the campaign, Gongliao locals and the TEPU eagerly provided assistance to DPP candidates in Taipei County. Ironically, the TEPU quickly lost its momentum because many DPP leaders dissociated themselves from street movements to focus on partisan politics. In addition, with the growth of the DPP, many of its human and financial resources were split among the party’s causes, resulting in financial issues for the TEPU. Moreover, although the newly-established New Party firmly stood with the DPP in the Legislative Yuan on the nuclear issue, members of the New Party showed little interest in anti-nuclear protests. Indeed, anti-nuclear was widely viewed as the trademark of the DPP, whose stance on Taiwanese Independence alienated New Party supporters. Therefore, the TEPU failed to build solid relationships with New Party supporters. Under this political situation, the TEPU began lobbying to block the fourth nuclear complex in the Legislative Yuan.

In May 1994, grassroots activists in the Gongliao district organized a local referendum. The central government considered this move invalid because there was no law supporting referendums at the time. Among the 58% turnout for the referendum,

54 Most authors and activists used to blame Premier Hao rather than President Lee for supporting nuclear power. It may be related to speculation that Hao’s military background allowed him to use state violence without President Lee’s permission.

135 96% voted against construction of the power plant. In the same month, a national poll showed about 60% of the participants favored of the fourth nuclear project (Chiu, 2001). Despite the divided public sentiment, the KMT passed the budget for the fourth nuclear project in July 1994.

The TEPU mobilized in Taipei County and Taipei City in June 1994 in an attempt to remove the pro-nuclear legislators from the Taipei area. The TEPU collected enough signatures to hold the first recall election in Taiwan’s history, aiming to unseat four KMT legislators in Taipei County in November 1994. However, the recall election in Taipei City was halted by the administration of justice, which accused the TEPU of forging the signatures. Meanwhile, President Lee declared that he would protect the pro- nuclear legislators, stating: “If anti-nuclear people don’t change their concept and action, they will have no way to go in few years” (quoted in Chen, 1994). Lee also asserted that Taiwan’s economic development hinged on the completion and operation of the fourth nuclear power plant. Later, 500 businesses leaders submitted a joint petition to the Legislative Yuan to show their support for the fourth nuclear project.

In July 1994, while the TEPU was busy with recall elections, one of the DPP leaders, Lin Yi-hsiung, decided to promote a national referendum on the fourth nuclear project and started a hunger strike to bring attention to his cause. Lin Yi-hsiung then collected more than 110,000 signatures on a petition to hold a nuclear referendum in a few days. The TEPU quickly coordinated with Lin Yi-hsiung to hold a national march from September to October. With President Lee promoting a law that would institute direct election of the Taiwanese president, the TEPU and Lin Yi-hsiung began calling for a direct vote on the nuclear issue as well.55 Thanks to Lin’s charismatic

55 Lin himself and other DPP leaders mobilized protests for the direct election of the president in 1992.

136 personality and his seniority in the political movement, the political will for pursuing a referendum law was sustained in the public sphere. In addition, pursuing a nuclear referendum became a key part of the anti-nuclear strategy of the TEPU from 1994 onward; many senior members of TEPU also joined the Nuke 4 Referendum Initiative Association (NRIA).

The NRIA was established on September 13, 1994. By November, its

‘Referendum for the fourth nuclear project’ and ‘Recall pro-nuclear legislators’ together heated up the anti-nuclear discourse in the public sphere. Unfortunately, that October, the Legislative Yuan had revised the threshold for recall votes to require 18 times the signatures as before, and a 50% turnout rate. Finally, the referendum and recall votes failed during the 1994 nuclear debate.

Although failing to reach the required numbers of voters in a recall election and local referendum in 1994, the TEPU activists believed that their actions had energized civil society by informing more people of the meaning of recalling and referendum in a democratic country. From that time on, the TEPU coordinated with the NRIA to promote an anti-nuclear referendum in the 1990s.

As explained in more detail in Chapter 4, at the request of the TEPU in 1995, the Control Yuan conducted an investigation into the fourth nuclear complex.

That investigation identified numerous administrative violations and safety issues, and a questionable environmental impact assessment (Control Yuan, 1995). The Control Yuan claimed that Taipower and the AEC increased the capacity of the fourth nuclear power plant from 2 GW to 2.6 GW without revisiting the environment impact assessment. The report encouraged the TEPU to launch a new battle, joining grassroots activists in a series of protests challenging the illegal land acquisition and mistakes in the

137 environmental impact assessment.

With the help of the TEPU, hundreds of Gongliao locals successfully occupied the construction site for 24 hours on October 14, 1996. At the same time, roughly 500 protesters led by the TEPU began a sit-in demonstration in front of the Legislative Yuan. However, the DPP and New Party failed to block the fourth nuclear complex in the Legislative Yuan on October 18, 1996 (see Chapter 3). It leaked out that the DPP made a secret deal with the KMT to trade their votes for other political concessions. The DPP leadership further declared that the DPP would not participate in protests or violent action. Without support at the legislature, the TEPU and grassroots activists in Gongliao retreated from lobbying, focusing instead on local action. Some activists also believed that major political parties were bowing to the wishes of U.S. nuclear industry because Taiwan’s national security depended upon the United States. Those activists believed that public pressure on the politicians was their only hope for stopping the fourth nuclear project.

In 1997, Gongliao villagers mobilized more than 100 vessels in a port blockade to show their capacity to interrupt a shipment of nuclear reactors (designed by General Electric (GE)) from Japan. With help from the TEPU, the villagers submitted an appeal to the cabinet, identifying the administrative violations of the ongoing construction that had been called out in the report by the Control Yuan. Even so, in

March 1999, the Atomic Energy Council permitted the construction of the reactor to begin. This decision again triggered the wrath of activists and Gongliao locals, as the errors and mistakes identified in 1995 had not been resolved. On March 28, about 6,000 people attended a protest in Taipei. That did little to impact the construction of the fourth nuclear complex. In 1998, Yilan County which was close to Gongliao also held a local referendum on the fourth nuclear complex. Among the 44% who voted, 64% of

138 voters were against the fourth nuclear complex (Ho, 2007).

In summary, during the first phase of the anti-nuclear movement, the DPP used the nuclear card to strengthen its political influence and conversely anti-nuclear groups brought the anti-nuclear message to the center of the political stage with the help of the DPP. Even though, the construction of the fourth nuclear complex was continued. The year 2000 was a great opportunity for the anti-nuclear movement to achieve a fruitful result. In March, DPP candidate Chen Shui-bian won the presidential election, becoming the first non-KMT president elected after World War II.

5.3 Taiwan’s Anti-nuclear Movement, Phase II (2001-2010) As discussed, President Chen failed to terminate the fourth nuclear project; construction restarted in 2001 after a favorable vote in the Legislative Yuan. Gongliao locals were frustrated by this outcome, frequently referring to DPP politicians as “liars” and “betrayers” (Wei, 2016). Scandals that exposed attempts by DPP leaders to profit by making arrangements between Taipower and subcontractors further tarnished the party’s reputation. However, most of TEPU’s leaders attributed the DPP’s withdrawal from nuclear policy to the non-cooperation of KMT legislators. Many TEPU members recognized the DPP’s anti-nuclear stance. They believed that given the situation, the

DPP had done all it could, and that cooperation with the DPP was the most effective way to advance their anti-nuclear agenda. As a senior member in TEPU stated (quoted in Ho, 2006):

I think DPP did their best in 2000 … think President Chen did enough in 2000-2001…I think the coordination between the DPP and anti-nuclear groups had no problem at the time. We held a march after the presidential election, and the reassessment was broadcasted on a public TV station, but the DPP had little influence in media circles, other media only made a few reports on the reassessment, so the social influence of the reassessment was very little …but eventually pan-blue chose to process political

139 struggle … for them, beating President Chen was more important than anti-nuclear…after the reassessment, the DPP did not coordinate with environmental groups for strategies ... we hoped the DPP could review the mistakes in the environmental impact assessment of the fourth nuclear complex, so we were surprised too, when the DPP announced the termination of the construction directly.56

This view was not shared by the Gongliao people. Disappointed by the failure of the DPP to terminate construction of the fourth nuclear complex, villagers expressed little interest in participating in anti-nuclear demonstrations organized by the

TEPU. Nuclear debate in the public sphere also cooled down from 2001 onward. The United Evening News and the United Daily carried 667 articles about anti-nuclear issues in 2000; the number dropped to 458 in 2001 and 149 in 2002 (Wei, 2016).57

Officials of Gongliao and the local politicians also were ready to suppress radical anti-nuclear activists on the grounds that they disrupted the peace. Unfortunately, veteran activists were aging and the village was losing young generations to the metropolis. According to Wei (2016), until 2008, most DPP politicians did not want to talk about nuclear power. Some of them even played the carbon reduction card to justify the fourth nuclear project (See Chapter 6). In fact, the DPP embraced conventional economic concepts and energy policies as the KMT did when the DPP was in power (see Chapter 6). After 2001, no DPP leaders dared to visit Gongliao, local people were so frustrated. Many villagers withdrew from the anti-nuclear front (Grano, 2015; Wei, 2016).

The Green Citizens’ Action Alliance (GCAA) played an important role in reviving local identity and cultivating a place-based consciousness among locals.

56 In a casual meeting, I learned this view from this TEPU member too; it was not a planed interview. 57 United News Group is owned by a senior KMT member and is one of the largest newsgroups in Taiwan.

140 Originally established as TEPU’s Taipei branch, GCAA split from the TEPU in 2000 due to differing views on relations with the DPP. The GCAA represented a younger generation of environmentalists intolerant of the DPP’s deviation from its anti-nuclear promise

The TEPU was now focused on resolving the nuclear problem by participating in formal policy-making processes (Ho, 2014). Specifically, two senior members of the TEPU, Lin Jung-I and Chang Kuo-lung, served in the Minister of Environmental Protection Administration during Chen’s presidency. In contrast, the GCAA adhered to a bottom-up approach, believing the energy of social movements lay with grassroots activism. While the DPP government made no effort to console Gongliao villagers after 2001, the GCAA approached villagers and YASA, building on their frustration and the locals’ continuing anti-nuclear sentiments.

As a YASA leader explained, “Once they realize the value of the local area, they will inevitably care about its future” (quoted in Wei, 2016). The annual Hohaiyan Rock Festival provided YASA another opportunity to share local experiences. Initiated by independent music groups and the government of Taipei County in 2000, the festival grew into the biggest music festival in Taiwan. Although the festival had little to do with Gongliao’s anti-nuclear pursuit, the fact that it was held at Fulong beach, right next to the construction site of the fourth nuclear complex, inevitably drew public attention to local anti-nuclear activism. Beginning in 2009, GCAA also held their own annual ‘No Nuke’ rock concert in Gongliao, an innovative mixture of live music, beach activities, art exhibitions, and activism (Coulson, 2011). In so doing, these young activists played an instrumental role in communicating the anti-nuclear message to the new constituencies (Grano, 2015).

141 One of the key leaders of the GCAA, Tsui Su-hsin, created the documentary, ‘How Are You, Gongliao?’ released in 2004. The film presented the anti- nuclear movement from the perspective of Gongliao villagers for the first time. In the documentary, Tsui challenged the image of the local people as a ‘violent mob’ and presented them as victims, desperate to protect their community from a brutal government still seeking projects to bolster its legitimacy. This perspective reversed the conventional image established by the mainstream media in the 1990s. Released at a time when the anti-nuclear movement was at low ebb, the documentary kept the issue centered in the public consciousness. The powerful images also helped bring the anti- nuclear message to a broader audience that might have originally viewed the anti- nuclear movement from a narrow partisan perspective.

The TEPU kept hoping to block the fourth nuclear project by participating in formal policy-making processes. In particular, the TEPU believed that the project could be stopped if the pan-green camp could block the additional budget requests or unveil more corruption in the project. Even though most DPP leaders withdrew from anti-nuclear politics after 2001, the TEPU was willing to coordinate with the few DPP politicians still passionate about anti-nuclear. According to Ho (2014), many of the TEPU professors had personally experienced the KMT’s martial law era repression, and so were more willing to coordinate with the DPP despite their understanding of the latter’s unreliability. After 2001, Lin Yi-hsiung, who was the chairman of DPP from

1998-2000 and a founder of the NRIA, may have been the only major DPP leader who insisted on anti-nuclear.

As discussed in Chapter 3, the conflicts between the pan-green and the pan-

142 blue camps escalated partially due to their differing views on national referendums.58 Taking advantage of this political opportunity, the NRIA mobilized national marches for a national referendum on the fourth nuclear project from 2001 to 2003, and TEPU also joined the marches. For the NRIA, anti-nuclear demonstration was merely one of its tasks; building a real civil society in which all citizens have the right to hold a referendum on important issues was its ultimate goal. However, the NRIA became widely viewed as an anti-nuclear organization. According to Lin Yi-hsiung (1995: 4),

A nonviolent march is feasible for all kinds of citizens no matter the gender or age … through the march… the mental quality of the participators can be improved and raise the mental quality of the whole nation … the discipline and sincerity of the march are the key to show the power

Thanks to the efforts of the NRIA, the marches triggered public support for a referendum law. The Referendum Act passed in the Legislative Yuan at the end of

2003 and was enacted in January 2004. Ironically, the first nationwide referendum was held during the 2004 presidential election in March with two questions initiated by President Chen that did not concern nuclear power. Seeing that the Act was being used merely as a tool to support government actions, NRIA mobilized a march for the revision of the Referendum Act. Lin Yi-hsiung specifically demanded the abolishment of the Referendum Review Commission under the cabinet, which reviewed and approved subjects for referendums. In other words, the existence of the Referendum

Review Commission meant that a referendum subject initiated by citizens could be denied by the government. According to Lin, the presence of the Referendum Review Commission itself violated the legitimacy of referendums. Furthermore, the high threshold required to validate a referendum (50% turnout rate) made it almost

58 For the pan-blue camp, a national referendum implying that Taiwan itself is a state was considered unacceptable (see Chapter 3), while the pan-green welcomed this kind of implication.

143 impossible to have a valid referendum. Lin directed his attention to revising what he and many other anti-nuclear activists considered to be an unreasonably high turnout threshold (Lin, 2013).

However, the strategy of the NRIA raised questions among Gongliao grassroots activists and others, who viewed that a national referendum on the fourth nuclear project, even with a reasonable threshold, as unfair, because Taipower and the pro-nuclear mainstream media dominated the nuclear discourse in the public sphere, making any national referendum an unfair game. In addition, the subject of a referendum could be manipulated. According to Pan (2007), an environmental activist showed concern such as: Do we really need a national referendum or local referendum on the fourth nuclear? Is it fair to let all people to decide Gongliao’s future? Second, do we have the same resource as Taipower has to develop our argument?

One senior activist was not troubled by the questionable Referendum Act.59

A nuclear crisis is not like an air crash that kills merely four hundred people…a nuclear crisis can destroy all of Taiwan…it is unreasonable that only a few people made the decision for all of us…that’s why I believe a [national] referendum is necessary… this is the basic concept of democracy… and I am not worried about the high threshold …if we can have a subject like: “Do you agree to continue the fourth nuclear project” without a high enough turnout rate, 60the project will be abolished automatically…

According to the NRIA, the revival of Gongliao grassroots activism was too weak to create enough political will to stop the fourth nuclear project, since the pan-blue coalition still held the majority in the Legislative Yuan and the DPP already gave in to pro-nuclear after 2001. In 2004, the NRIA successfully pushed a reform of the

59 I met this activist in a conference and learned this view from him. It was not a planned interview. 60 50% of turnout rate was required.

144 Legislative Yuan, in which the total seats of legislators were reduced from 225 to 113 in the 2008 election. However, this change had little to do with the revision of the Referendum Act or anti-nuclear.

After President Ma, from the KMT, took over the office in 2008, the NRIA not only promoted a referendum on the fourth nuclear complex but also requested a referendum for controversial economic treaty between Taiwan and China. Producing commodities for Chinese market with cheap nuclear power was the crux of KMT’s economic policy. In particular, KMT often warned the public that South Korea with its cheap nuclear power would entirely defeat Taiwan in the global economy and its place in the Chinese market, if Taiwan gave up the nuclear power pathway. KMT’s argument appeared reasonable to many of the public at the time. Hence the anti-nuclear side could not make significant progress. In August 2010, GCAA mobilized about 300 anti-nuclear activists protested on the fourth nuclear construction site due to the accidents and errors unveiled in the year (see Chapter 4), but the construction was not influenced.

The Legislative Yuan showed no interest in revising the Referendum Act and blocked the proposals initiated by the pan-green camp. However, the debate on further trading with China increased the morale of social movements, because NGOs had worried about the consequences of a ‘One China free market’ that might erode Taiwan’s cripple state legitimacy, newly-born democracy, and environment: people may take more environmental/social risks while Taiwan expanding production for foreign market. Facing the revival of social power, President Ma responded with quasi- authoritarian measures like the KMT did in the 1980s. Many institutionalized channels of access to official decision-making process (created during Chen’s presidency) were no longer accessible to NGOs (Ho, 2014). For example, in 2003, the DPP cabinet held a series of ‘Nuclear free Homeland Conferences’ for NGOs. During the conferences, the

145 cabinet advocated increasing renewable energy to 10% by 2010 (Bureau of Energy, 2007: 51).61 These conferences were discontinued under Ma. Judges and prosecutors also turned to ‘expedited process’ to deal with minor infractions, using them as a weapon for disrupting protesters who did not have the chance to appear in court to defend themselves but instead received notices of guilt and fined directly (Cole, 2015).

During the 2008-2011 economic debate, activists and journalists were not only often harassed by the police but also publicly disturbed by gangsters who had businesses in China (Cole, 2015). However, in contrast to the 1980s, President Ma’s authoritarian measures triggered direct retaliation from social movements (Hsiao & Ku, 2010). In particular, President Ma quickly withdrew his promises to environmental issues after 2008, and the number of environmental protests increased from 251 to 363 between 2008 and 2012 (Huang & Ho, 2015). TEPU and GCAA thus revived their influence through coordinating with these environmental protests, even though many of these protests had no direct connection with nuclear power.

As more and more people took to the streets to express their discontent, anti-nuclear activists found it easier to recruit sympathizers. This time, the younger generation of social movements did not rely on the DPP, which was collapsing after the

2008 fiasco (see Chapter 3). When the Fukushima crisis occurred in March 2011, the resurgence of the anti-nuclear movement greatly benefited from this reviving social power. According to Ho (2014), the number of social protests increased from 382 to 564 between 2008 and 2011, and the number of assemblies and marches increased from 3,636 to 5,298. Within just three years, President Ma helped create the circumstances in which anti-nuclear groups could seek more allies.

61 In 2015, renewable energy provided 4.2% of total electricity supplies (Taipower, 2016).

146

Even though the construction of the fourth nuclear complex was not affected by anti-nuclear activists during 2001-2011. In 2008, a Gongliao resident sadly said “[…] Local protests are useless, the central government does not care about us at all […]at least please build it (the fourth nuclear) with quality” (quoted in Ruan, 2008).

Ho had called that 2001-2011 a ‘lost decade’ for the anti-nuclear movement

(Ho, 2014), but anti-nuclear groups were able to influence President Chen to create a ‘Nuclear-Free Homeland Communication Committee’ and invited NGO leaders to participate. This marked the first time that the central government’s resources were devoted to raising public awareness of nuclear risk (Ho, 2005), although the Committee was abolished after President Ma took office in 2008. Most important of all, through the continuing effort of activists, the anti-nuclear discourse, including renewable energy transition proposals, remained in the public sphere and cultivated a younger generation to the anti-nuclear movement.

5.4 Taiwan’s Anti-nuclear Movement, Phase III (2011 -May 2014) The Fukushima crisis in March 2011 caused immediate panic in Taiwan’s public sphere. The resurgence of the anti-nuclear movement and its political ramifications in Taiwan were clearly a side effect of the Fukushima crisis: the leaking of radioactive materials was of high concern to the Taiwanese because of the geographical and cultural affinity between Taiwan and Japan. Anti-nuclear activists staged a demonstration in Taipei on March 20, terminating a decade of dormancy during which no major protest had occurred. On April 30, another nationwide anti-nuclear demonstration, TEPU, GCAA, and other NGOs held the national anti-nuclear action concurrently in Taipei, Taichung, and Kaohsiung. In Taitung County, indigenous groups also demonstrated, because it was reported by the media that the cabinet was

147 considering setting up a final nuclear waste disposal site in Taitung, the homeland of six indigenous communities. The national anti-nuclear action also received support from cultural groups and the religious community.62

For Taiwanese activists, the Fukushima crisis became a powerful justification of their anti-nuclear stance, since a great number of Taiwanese are at risk should anything go wrong at nuclear complexes due to the high population density near them. Nature released a report in April 2011 indicating that Taiwan's 1,933-megawatt Kuosheng plant [the second nuclear complex] had 5.5 million people living within a 30- kilometre radius and the 1,208-megawatt Chin Shan plant [the first nuclear complex] had 4.7 million living nearby.(Butler, 2011a). In addition, Taiwan’s capital, Taipei, falls within the 30-km zone of both nuclear complexes. In Fukushima’s case, 7.7 million people lived within 150 kilometers of the site. In addition, the unfinished fourth nuclear power plant was also located within 30-km zone of the first and second nuclear complexes. A story from Wall Street Journal noted that all nuclear reactors in Taiwan fell in zones of high seismic activity, increasing the risk associated with them (Tamman, Casselman, & Mozur, 2011). As Laurent Stricker, chairman of the World Association of Nuclear Operators (WANO), stated in the wake of Fukushima, “We need to look at the safety of reactors taking into account where they are” (quoted in Butler, 2011b).

Engineered safety might not be enough.

In addition, activists were not convinced by President Ma’s guarantee on nuclear safety. A victim of the Fukushima crisis was invited by the GCAA to share her experience in Japan. In July 2011, Lin Tsung-yao, a former member of the Fourth

62 In Habermas regard (1981), new social movements such as environmental movements are triggered by distorted communication in society. In Taiwan’s case, the anti-nuclear movement in this phase can be viewed as a response to distorted communication caused by nuclear power. Detailed explanation is presented in Chapter 6.

148 Nuclear Power Plant Safety Committee under the Atomic Energy Council, released a thesis that identified numerous safety problems with the fourth nuclear project especially those caused by the ‘redesign’ of the fourth nuclear complex (see Chapter 4). This thesis further triggered the anti-nuclear discourse in the public sphere (Tang, 2011). The nuclear issue thus emerged as a key topic in the 2012 presidential election.

Facing the resurgence of the anti-nuclear movement, in November 2011

President Ma promised to decommission the existing three nuclear complexes on schedule by 2025, but insisted on the commercial operation of the fourth nuclear complex by 2016. On the other hand, the DPP presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen proposed the ‘2025 no-nuclear homeland’ program in her platform during the 2012 presidential election. Tsai Ing-wen meant to complete the construction of the fourth nuclear complex without commercial operation. Ma won reelection in January. In February 2012, the Tao people mobilized a protest in front of the leaking nuclear waste storage facility on Orchid Island. On March 11, anti-nuclear groups mobilized marches in three cities. About 5,000 people and more than 100 civil groups participated in this protest (Lee, 2012). Nevertheless, President Ma was reelected in March 2012.

After President Ma started his second term in May 2012, he declared that “I sense that no one is opposed to my [nuclear] proposal, so we will follow this pathway” (quoted in “No one against nuclear power”, 2012). In a few days, some cultural groups mobilized a protest in front of the presidential office with the slogan “I am someone, I oppose nuclear energy” (Grano, 2015). With the help of cultural groups, many cafes and restaurants participated in the anti-nuclear movement by providing their space for anti- nuclear activities and billboards in the following years.

During this period, anti-nuclear groups eagerly coordinated with domestic

149 and international academic institutes and other kinds of NGOs to spread their anti- nuclear discourse in the public sphere. In particular, the younger generation of the anti- nuclear movement greatly utilized the internet to organize national anti-nuclear activities. For example, Tao youth from Orchid Island utilized Facebook to mobilize protests in Taiwan. The internet also spread the anti-nuclear message of the Tao people to outsiders (Liu, 2013).

In the post-Fukushima era, nuclear safety became a resounding argument for the anti-nuclear discourse. Although the officials guaranteed nuclear safety as usual, the shock from the Fukushima crisis and the updated reports on past nuclear accidents in Taiwan gradually changed the public opinion toward nuclear power in general. Furthermore, in June 2012, the Department of Health announced a plan for setting a looser standard for the presence of Caesium-137 and Caesium-134 in foods (Ministry of Health and Welfare, 2012).63 The new limit for these two radioactive elements, if passed, would be about 1.5 times higher than the old standard and six times higher than the standard in Japan. The proposal of the cabinet thus triggered panic in the public sphere, because the NGOs suspected the government of trying to make concessions to Japanese food importers.

In October 2012, a magazine, Business Today, invited Koide Horoaki, a famous Japanese anti-nuclear whistle blower who testified in the Japan’s Upper House

Government after the Fukushima crisis, to give a speech in an anti-nuclear forum. Koide challenged the safety of the fourth nuclear complex, pointing out that the mega-risk of the fourth nuclear complex would not be affordable.64 Koide’s speech again increased the public concern regarding the nuclear safety issue. Because of the cultural affinity

63 Department of Health was upgraded to Ministry of Health and Welfare on July 23, 2013. 64 I personally attended Koide’s speech in Taipei.

150 between Taiwan and Japan, the latter was usually regarded as an icon of perfect quality and technology by the Taiwanese public. When the public realized that even Japan’s nuclear industry was not perfect, many quickly lost their remaining confidence in Taipower. Similarly, in October 2012, two senior KMT politicians, the Taipei City Mayor, Hau Lung-pin and New Taipei City Mayor, Chu Li-luan, expressed their concerns regarding nuclear safety. They publicly stated that the fourth nuclear power plant should not be put into operation if its safety remained in doubt (“Anti-nuclear stance not political: New Taipei mayor”, 2012).65 Facing increasing questions, Taipower and President Ma had not changed their confidence in nuclear safety in Taiwan.

In December 2012, under increasing anti-nuclear sentiment, Taipower again requested an additional budget increase for the construction of the fourth nuclear project, which would have increased the total budget to $10 billion. In early 2013, two well-known magazines, Business Today and Wealth Magazine, ran a series of articles on the internal corruption, accidents at the site of the fourth nuclear power plant, and political structure of Taipower (Chen, 2013; Fang, 2013; Liu, 2013). This might have been the first time after 2001 that business-oriented popular magazines probed Taipower’s problems. Taipower’s image quickly collapsed as its nuclear accidents and corruption received more and more public attention.66 With the help of the internet and the bad publicity Taipower received, anti-nuclear discourse spread with unprecedented speed throughout Taiwan’s public sphere.

Although the KMT Prime Minister Chiang promised to hold a referendum

65 Chu ran for 2016 presidential election as a KMT candidate. 66 In fact, a former Taipower employee I interviewed implied that if he and I unveil too much of Taipower’s corruptions, we may cause some ‘vital’ consequences for our personal safety.

151 on the fourth nuclear complex in February 2013, the Prime Minister continued to assert that Taiwan’s economic development required the fourth nuclear complex. This attitude provoked anti-nuclear activists to mobilize a nationwide protest in four cities—Taipei, Taichung, Kaohsiung, and Taitung—on March 9, the so-called ‘309 anti-nuclear march’. Many activists did not regard a referendum as a useful method for stopping the fourth nuclear project, and instead tried to force the Legislative Yuan to cancel the project through public pressure.

The ‘309 anti-nuclear march’ turned out to be the largest anti-nuclear protest in Taiwan’s history: around 220,000 people joined the marches. More than 100 organizations-- political, environmental, labor, religious, cultural, musical, and social-- expressed their support. The participation of cultural groups and the religious community in particular created a positive public image of the protest.

A day before the march, a group of female celebrities, including business leaders and wives of business leaders, had established the Mom Loves Taiwan Association (MLTA), claiming nuclear safety to be a key issue for the next generation. This was perhaps the first time members of the Taiwanese capitalist class showed strong concern for nuclear issues. Although the MLTA later announced that it was not merely an anti-nuclear organization, it continued coordinating with other anti-nuclear groups and supported the pursuit of a renewable energy transition. President Ma even met with some members of MLTA to guarantee Taiwan’s nuclear safety, but Ma could not convince MLTA and activists that the government could secure nuclear safety (Lee, 2013).

Under these circumstances, Taipower’s additional budget request was blocked in the Legislative Yuan. During the conflict surrounding the KMT’s nuclear

152 referendum proposal, activists mobilized several protests in front of the Legislative Yuan in support of DPP legislators attempting to paralyze discussion on the referendum plan. In particular, the protesters supported a revision of the Referendum Act before launching a nuclear referendum. According to the Referendum Act, if the turnout was less than 50%, the referendum was considered invalid, which would mean that construction and operation would continue. In this regard, the DPP and anti-nuclear groups viewed KMT’s referendum proposal “Do you agree to stop the construction and operation of the fourth nuclear complex?” as a manipulated referendum proposal.

Other anti-nuclear activities continued in the public sphere. For example, foreign scholars were asked to share their knowledge of nuclear risk and renewable energy. In June 2013, anti-nuclear activists invited Kikuchi Youichi, a former GE engineer who supervised the construction of two nuclear complexes in Japan (Liu, 2013). Kikuchi had already been invited by the DPP cabinet for the quality inspection of the fourth nuclear complex back in 2006. According to Kikuchi, the construction of the fourth nuclear complex was a disaster. His own observations led him to conclude that “[t]he quality of the construction was even worse than that of ordinary mansions in Japan” (quoted in Lai, 2013, I also attended Kikuchi’s speech in Taipei). Kikuchi also claimed that the earthquake damaged the cooling system at the Fukushima reactors at the very beginning, not the tsunami that followed. That meant reactors like those in Taiwan were also susceptible to earthquake damage. As a result of his claims, the KMT barred Kikuchi from entering the fourth nuclear construction site (Liu, 2013).

In August 2013, the KMT’s nuclear referendum proposal was blocked in the Legislative Yuan. By September, President Ma attempted to revoke the membership of KMT legislative speaker, Wang Jin-pyng, a leader of the attempt to postpone the referendum plan. The KMT legislator who launched the referendum proposal withdrew

153 it in this political storm. Ma and Wang then began their battle in court about Wang’s KMT membership (“For Dummies: Battles between Ma and Wang: Ying-jeou’s fiasco”, 2015). The conflict between Ma and Wang thus threw KMT leadership in chaos.

On March 8, 2014, anti-nuclear activists mobilized a nationwide protest again, but the participation was much lower than in 2013. This was primarily because of the controversies over KMT’s ongoing economic policy. The KMT planned to push for more production for trading with Chinese market, and asserted that the cheap energy from nuclear power was the crux for this strategy. Anti-nuclear groups questioned the justification of nuclear power under this economic policy. For the anti-nuclear side, nuclear risks and potential crises outweighed all merits from trading with China.

On the evening of March 18, 2014, some NGO members (most were students), including anti-nuclear activists, occupied the Legislative Yuan. Their action was aiming to protest a proposal of an economic treaty between Taiwan and mainland China. A florist contributed a cluster of sunflowers to students, who put flowers on the rostrum. The image of the sunflowers soon spread on the internet, and the protest was soon named the ‘318 Sunflower Movement’ by the media. By the dawn of March 19, 1,000 people had occupied the Legislative Yuan and nearby blocks. In the following weeks, crowds from all over the country occupied the blocks near the Legislative Yuan, supporting the students by launching marches and delivering supplies. Around 500,000 people in total joined the protesters (Hsu, 2014; Cole, 2015). Anti-nuclear groups had also joined the occupation. Finally, Wang Jin-pyng made an agreement with the protesters on April 6. The Sunflower Movement ended on April 10, 2014 when the protesters retreated from the Legislative Yuan area. The legitimacy of the KMT had de facto collapsed during the movement.

154 Taking advantage of the political turmoil of 2014 caused by Sunflower protest against the KMT legitimacy, Lin Yi-hsiung started an anti-nuclear hunger strike on April 22, 2014. This was his second hunger strike since he began to promote a nuclear referendum in 1994. As a former DPP chairman (1998-2000), Lin’s personal tragedy during the martial law era received national attention. Furthermore, Lin’s action received international attention and increased political pressure on KMT’s state legitimacy. Major political leaders, including President Ma, visited Lin at the spot where

Lin’s mother and twin daughters were murdered in 1980 when Lin was in prison.67 During Lin’s hunger strike, anti-nuclear activists mobilized a series of protests. According to Hsiao Yeh (2014: 5), a novelist and a senior member of cultural groups, Lin’s hunger strike recalled people’s memory of KMT’s state violence in the martial law era and linked it to President Ma’s authoritarian measures.

On April 23, anti-nuclear activists held a protest in front of the headquarters of the KMT. The chairman of the DPP, Su Tseng-chang, met with President Ma on April 25, but the two could not reach an agreement on the fourth nuclear project. However, under immense social pressure, many KMT politicians withdrew their support on the fourth nuclear power plant. On April 26, yet another anti-nuclear march was held in Taipei. The excessive police violence toward female protesters, broadcast by the media, provoked the wrath of the public. On April 27, after President Ma’s meeting with other senior KMT politicians, the cabinet declared a halt to the fourth nuclear project until a national referendum to restart the project could pass. Specifically, the KMT cabinet agreed to seal off the almost completed reactor No .1 and halt the construction of reactor No. 2. At the time, the project already cost more than $9.9 billion (World Nuclear Association, 2012; Ho, 2014). Lin’s hunger strike thus ended on April 28. At the time,

67 The KMT claimed to know nothing about the case, even though Lin’s house was under 24-hour police surveillance at the time.

155 one poll showed that just 26.6% of the participants supported terminating the project immediately; 27.8% supported suspending construction until a referendum or a safety/quality inspection. Only 19.9% supported going forth with operation (Taiwan Indicators Survey Research, 2014).

Over the next two years, the KMT suffered historical losses in all national elections. In 2016, the DPP won both the majority in the Legislative Yuan and the

Presidency for the first time. After 30 years, the DPP finally had a great chance to realize its promise to end the use of nuclear power by 2025. The DPP could also challenge the (progressive) belief that nuclear power was essential to Taiwan’s legitimacy. The future of Taiwan’s anti-nuclear movement and democracy may be addressed by a senior NGO scholar.

Yes, it would be difficult for civil society when many NGO members were recruited into the government …on the one hand, you need people in the government to proceed the reform, on the other hand, people in the government have to compromise with others, many people lost their ideals after entering the government …this is how political system works … the vital problem is if civil society can remain active under DPP’s rule… yes, in Taiwan’s situation, because we do not have a real state legitimacy, many citizens have limited and fragment knowledge about key international issues, and only concern some major countries, especially the United States, and ignore more than 100 countries in the world …it is not good for civil society … also, without a real state legitimacy, our government have limited capacity in the negotiations with other countries and can affect (domestic policies)…but after all, it depends on Taiwanese people, if Taiwanese people have the courage to make decision … usually our government had no capacity and no qualified people to bargain with other countries on economic treaties. Unless it faces immense social pressure, the government usually gives in to other countries.68

5.5 Conclusion This chapter presents major events in Taiwan’s anti-nuclear movement from

68 In a casual meeting I learned this view from this scholar. It was not an official interview.

156 1987 to 2014. In the 1980s, the anti-movement was closely linked to the DPP under the wave of democratization. Together activists and the DPP challenged the authoritarian state dominated by the KMT. By the mid-1990s, anti-nuclear activists greatly built their discourse around anti-technocracy and anti-dictatorship. This strategy appeared reasonable, since the KMT never transformed into a western-style democratic party. Rallying with the newly-established DPP was a sensible option for the early anti-nuclear activists, because both were suppressed by the quasi-police state until the mid-1990s. As

I mentioned, even though the Control Yuan identified numerous administrative errors and mistakes in the fourth nuclear power by 2000, the cabinet continued with the construction without resolving these problems.

During 2000-2011, the anti-nuclear movement appeared to have a bleak future. After President Chen failed to terminate the fourth nuclear project in 2001, activists and Gongliao locals could not mobilize significant protest before the

Fukushima crisis. However, the efforts of the activists during this phase were not totally in vain. The young generation of the anti-nuclear movement was cultivated and the Referendum Act passed in 2003. The anti-nuclear discourse therefore remained active in the public sphere. In addition, the fact that President Ma revived quasi-police state measures after 2008 triggered the revival of social movements. An unintended consequence was that anti-nuclear activists won more allies from other kinds of civil groups.

Shocked by the Fukushima crisis, the anti-nuclear movement quickly restored its political will when the government failed to temper the public as updated anti-nuclear discourse spread in the public sphere. In this final phase, the brewing anti- nuclear circumstances finally forced the KMT cabinet to promise to conduct a referendum. However, before the controversies on KMT’s referendum proposal were

157 resolved, the Sunflower Movement, responding to another authoritarian measure, crippled the legitimacy of the KMT. Seizing this opportunity, Taiwan’s anti-nuclear movement achieved a major victory, halting the fourth nuclear project through social power rather than relying on partisan politics. In this regard, the halt of the fourth nuclear power can be viewed as the starting point of Taiwan’s real civil society, because the civil groups, rather than political parties, have dominated the anti-nuclear politics in recent years. Moreover, the legitimacy of the KMT, a party that has retained its authoritarian structure until today (2016), collapsed along with the halt of the fourth nuclear project. With the fiasco of the KMT in the 2016 national elections, the growth of a more democratic civil society may further coevolve with the DPP’s ‘2025 no-nuclear homeland’ program, if this program can be integrated into a more democratic energy structure.

Table 5-1 Major Anti-nuclear Events 1987-2014 Time Event 11/1/1987 TEPU was established The first large anti-nuclear 2/20/1988 protest in Orchid Island 3/6/1988 YASA was established Activists launched a hunger strike 4/23/1988 in front of Taipower's headquarters TEPU and other civil groups mobilized a protest in Taipei, 4/23/1989 about 5,000 people join the march Taipei County Council passed a 11/1990 resolution for anti-the fourth nuclear project

158 TEPU and other civil groups mobilized a protest in Taipei, 5/5/1991 about 20,000 people join the march The cabinet restarted the 2/20/1992 fourth nuclear project TEPU mobilized a hunger strike in front of Legislative 1992/5/12-1992/6/3 Yuan, more than 100 professors joined the hunger strike The Legialtive Yuan unfroze 6/3/1992 the fourth nuclear budget Gongliao hold a local referendum on the fourth 5/22/1994 nuclear project with 58% turnout, in which 96% was anti- nuclear TEPU promoted a recall 6/25/1994 election in Taipei County Lin Yi-hsiung began a hunger 7/11/1994 strike for a referendum on the fourth nuclear The Legislative Yuan passed 8 7/12/1994 years budget for the fourth nuclear NRIA launched a national 9/21/1994 march for a referendum on the fourth nuclear Taipei County hold a local referendum on the fourth 11/27/1994 nuclear project with 18.5% turnout, in which 89% was anti- nuclear The Control Yuan's report identified administrative 1995/9 violations in the fourth nuclear project Taipei city hold a local referendum on the fourth 3/23/1996 nuclear project with 59% turnout, in which 54% was anti- nuclear

159 Gongliao locals occupied the 10/1/1996 construction site for 24 hours TEPU as well as South Korea activists protested the secret 1/29/1997 agreement of sending nuclear waste to North Korea A protest with 6,000 people in 3/28/1997 Taipei Yilan County hold a local referendum on the fourth 12/5/1998 nuclear project with 44% turnout, in which 64% was anti- nuclear The DPP candidate Chen shui- 3/18/2000 bian was elected as President The DPP cabinet declared to 10/27/2000 terminate the fourth nuclear complex The Legislative Yuan voted to 1/31/2001 restart the fourth nuclear project with 134:70 The DPP cabinet declared to 2/14/2001 restart the fourth nuclear project The activists launched a march 2/24/2001 for a national referendum on the fourth nuclear The NRIA launched a march 9/21/2002 for a national referendum on the fourth nuclear President Chen declared that he will hold a a national 6/27/2003 referendum on the fourth nuclear The Referendum Law was passed; The law forbids the 11/27/2003 administration to initiate a referendum Tsui Su-hsin's documentary, 2004/4 ‘How Are You, Gongliao?’ was released The TEPU mobilized a march 6/5/2005 in Taipei 3/11/2011 The Fukushima crisis

160 2011/3-2011/6 Activitists launched protests Cultural circles mobilized an 5/28/2012 anti-nuclear protest in Taipei The KMT cabinet promised to 2/25/2013 hold a referendum on the fourth nuclear The largest national wide anti- nuclear protest in Taiwan's 3/9/2013 history. About 200,000 people joined the marches Activists protested KMT's 2013/5-2013/8 referendum plan 3/18/2014-4/10/2014 Sunflower Movement Lin Yi-hsiung began a hunger 2014/4/22-4/27 strike, and a series of protests were held in Taipei The KMT cabinet declared to 4/28/2014 halt the construction of the fourth nuclear complex

Table 5-2 Local referendums on the fourth nuclear turnout rate Time Location anti-fourth nuclaer (%) (%) Gonliao May 1995 58 96.9 Distrct Taipei November 1995 18.5 88.6 County March 1997 Taipei City 58.7 51.5 December 1999 Yilan County 44 64

Source: Ho, 2007

161

Chapter 6

ANALYSIS: THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN NUCLEAR POWER AND

LEGITIMACY IN TAIWAN

My ‘Anti-nuclear is for anti-dictatorship’ was not exclusive to dictators, but also technocracy, aimed at those officials and business owners who hid information and avoided the supervision of the public under formal democracy. (Lin, 2013)

Do not let Taiwan turn into the next Fukushima (the slogan of 309 anti-nuclear march, 2013)

Acoording to the historical and empirical record in Chapters 3, 4, and 5, in Taiwan’s case, Path I (Figure 2-3) is not applicable to the Taiwan’s case. In the 1980s and 1990s, the anti-nuclear movement emerged and strongly challenged state legitimacy, leading to the rise of the largest opposition party, the DPP, and in civil society with the famous slogan’ Anti-nuclear is for anti-dictatorship’. Path III (Figure2-5) also does not explain the choice of nuclear power. In fact, the KMT government began construction of the first nuclear complex in 1971 before the oil crisis. It continued investment of nuclear power as a modernization strategy, not as an energy stretagy per se. And, Path III cannot address Taiwan’s unique U.N. crisis as a driver for the choice of nuclear power.

In the post Fukushima era (2011-2014) civil society suscessfully challenged state legitimacy, leading to a crisis of state lefitimacy in 2014 as civil movements occupied government and halted its operations. Both political parties are now doubted as sources of political leadership and governments formed by them are regarded in civil society as threats to democratic governance. Only Path II (Figure 2-4) can comprehensively apply to Taiwan’s case over time. In this case, legitimacy increasingly appears to be regarded as a property of civil society, not the state.

162 6.1 Setting the Stage for this Chapter

Habermas argued that the modern state has to secure a market economy by the enforcement of the rule of law. By doing so, the legitimacy of the modern state and loyalty of the people could be maintained. As mentioned in Chapter 3, the state legitimacy of Taiwan heavily relied on the endorsement of the U.N. after WWII. As an authoritarian party, the KMT enforced laws in a manner that often brought criticism. Thus hurt the island’s claim of legitimacy but with U.N. recognition, it managed to maintain a measure of international legitimacy except, of course, in the eyes of mainland China, which likewise struggled with international criticisms regarding to legal system. When the U.N. blocked Mao’s People’s Republic of China (P.R.C.), the validity of Taiwan’s (R.O.C.’s) state legitimacy appeared secure, even though it daily violated common sense, claiming it represented ‘China’ in the world.

The KMT, with support from the United States, transformed Taiwan into an industrial country. Although the ideology of progress had not yet spread through Taiwanese society, the KMT government quickly installed a technocracy with the aid of the United States. For example, under the guidance of the United States, state-owned enterprises were re-formed in the 1950s for the purpose of building a rational, modern economy. The United States also trained numerous Taiwanese technocrats.

The 1971 U.N. revocation of statehood directly affected Taiwan’s state legitimacy at the global scale. As described in Chapter 3, the Taiwanese people panicked after the U.N. crisis, and the 1973 oil crisis hobbled the economy. In this regard, the KMT’s legitimacy was crippled when it had trouble securing the promised market economy and energy security. Faced with a double legitimation crisis, the KMT turned to nuclear power as a cultural symbol to draw attention away from its inability to safeguard the fundamental norms of the modern state.

163 The nuclear power industry’s aspirational advertisements created a belief that Taiwan was on its way to becoming an advanced and rich society like advanced Western countries, and to building the ‘New China’ based on wealth and science. Nuclear power itself was seen as an icon of advanced technology. Using nuclear power became a kind of national glory in itself, analogous to wining Olympic medals. Still, without the endorsement of the U.N., maintaining a good relationship with the United States became vital for securing Taiwan’s crippled state legitimacy, especially after the United States ended its official diplomatic relationship with Taiwan in 1979. Therefore, strategically and rationally, the KMT needed to foster strong business relationships with the United States in the nuclear industry (see Chapter 3).

Through state- and KMT-owned enterprises, the KMT dominated the emerging economic system in Taiwan. Generally, business associations, including industrial, cultural, sports, and agricultural associations, chew their leaders from the

KMT. In this way, the KMT did not simply follow the market but regulated it to foster its developmental strategy. During this period, the outstanding economic performance of the country reaffirmed people’s belief in technocracy and the government. Developing science and technology became a key part of the KMT’s political agenda and adding nuclear power helped the KMT secure state legitimacy. Additionally, the economic system was further sustained through the creation of jobs through the ‘Ten Major Construction Projects’, which required the support of nuclear power after the oil crisis of

1973 (see Chapter 3).

The rapid industrialization in the 1970s created social circumstances for pursuing democracy. Ironically, at the same time, the achievement of economic growth led the KMT to revive its authoritarian measures in the late 1970s and the early 1980s, even though the party had shown some tolerance toward political activists in the early

164 and mid-1970s. During the martial law era, also called the ‘time of white terror’ (1947- 1987) in Taiwan, around 200,000 ‘politically incorrect’ victims were trailed or punished and about 4,000 people were officially executed for their real or perceived opposition to the KMT (Wu, 2004; Huang, 2005; Lee, 2007).69

Paradoxically, environmental activists, including anti-nuclear activists, became the major social power that challenged the state legitimacy after the 1979

Kaohsiung Incident. The Three Mile Island crisis of that same year inspired the formerly weak voice of anti-nuclear activists. Even though Taiwan’s experience differed from that of advanced Western states, the situation reflected Habermas’s analysis on the legitimation crises and the responses of modern states. Habermas argued that when the modern state fails to distribute or manage use-value (i.e. the utility derived from goods and services or disutility resulting from pollution and environmental problems) — people tend to withdraw their loyalty to the political system. Therefore, it was not a coincidence that many Taiwanese environmental activists, including anti-nuclear activists, allied with political activists to challenge the KMT in the 1980s and 1990s. Even though some environmental activists did not aim to challenge the KMT’s leadership, their protests nevertheless created the conditions suitable for other kinds of protests, leading to the end of Taiwan Martial Law in 1987. By 2000, ‘Anti-Nuclear is for Anti-Dictatorship’ may become the most well-known political slogan in Taiwan (Wu, 2002; Ho, 2005; Lin, 2013). A senior activist recounted “Dictatorship can be interpreted by many ways, but after all, at the time [1980s-1990s], it meant to challenge the legitimacy of the KMT, because from the view of the KMT, any protest is a kind of de-state legitimacy action”.70

69 Taiwan’s population was about 19,700,000 in 1987. 70 In a casual meeting with this activist, the author learned this view. It was not a planned interview.

165 Nuclear power in Taiwan thus succinctly underscores the contradiction between the civil rights and state legitimacy. Originally, nuclear power served to justify Taiwan and the KMT’s state legitimacy in the 1970s, but when the activists realized the many negative side effects, such as the health impacts and environmental damage wrought by nuclear power, these became a crux of anti-KMT and anti-state discourse. Thanks to the growing civil society, actions to challenge Taiwan’s authoritarian government from the mid-1980s, anti-nuclear discourse became a key issue of Taiwan’s politics onward. In the next section, I analyze three components which justified nuclear power in Taiwan. In this chapter, I use the framework (Figure 6-1) outlined in Chapter 2 to proceed with my analysis of nuclear power and state legitimacy focusing on the following aspects:

State Legitimation or State Legitimacy Crisis presented by Nuclear Power

▪ Nuclear power as a means to demonstrate the emergence of an ideology of progress ▪ Deepening of risk tendencies in society ▪ Evolution of risk society

Power Economic Political System System Money

Development Money Power Administration Strategy

Implication for Legitimation Lifeworld (worldview/common sense for Technocracy communication) Irrationality of risk calculus Organized irresponsibility

Figure 6-1 Analytical Framework

166 First, nuclear power has been supported by three components: (1) faith in the ideology of progress, (2) belief that nuclear risk is manageable, and (3) the view that secure economic growth lies at the heart of a modern society. In this regard, the ‘lost decade of anti-nuclear’ (2001-2011) can be viewed as the ‘invisible’ of the discourse due to distorted communication. According to Habermas (1987:354)

There are certainly good reasons to fear military potentials for destruction, nuclear power plants, atomic waste, genetic engineering, the storage and central utilization of private data, and the like. These real anxieties are combined, however, with the terror of a new category of risks that are literally invisible and are comprehensible only from the perspective of the system.71 These risks invade the lifeworld and at the same time burst its dimensions.

Or, to use Beck’s term, the lost decade could represent a kind of ‘unwillingness to know’ about risk Beck (1999: 109-132; 2009a: 115-128).

Second, nuclear power was promoted by the government as a means of securing economic growth to overcome the global economic challenge. Government officials also used the promise of potential benefits that would follow from having nuclear power as precursors for personal freedom that would come from the expanding free market system. On the other hand, nuclear power negatively affected civil rights through a series of accidents and mistakes associated with the nuclear industry itself. In Taiwan, under more democratic circumstances after the mid-1990s, this contradiction would be denied by technocracy, partisan politics and the coercive influence of money and power from the political and economic systems. As a result, the fourth nuclear could be endorsed by the Legislative Yuan and justified on economic grounds until the Fukushima crisis.

71 Habermas means political and economic systems distorted communication through money and power (Habermas, 1987:153-183, see also Chapter 2). Thus risks have become invisible.

167 As described in previous chapters, major political parties eventually aligned with the pro-nuclear pathway to maintain their legitimacy while in power. The rise of globalization also proved a key factor that allowed nuclear power to prevail in Taiwan. Nuclear power served as the technical solution for fulfilling the needs of the economic system while distorting social communications.

The third aspect of the analysis relates to the mega-risk from nuclear power.

The three risk tendencies described previously—irrationality of risk calculus, technocracy, and organized irresponsibility—would propel the state to ignore civil society concerns about risky technologies, thereby enabling the revival of Taiwan’s anti- nuclear movement in the post-Fukushima era.

Forth, the revival of civil society is evaluated as an important force for change in the post-Fukushima era. Conversely, the renewal of Taiwan’s anti-nuclear movement contributed to the revival of civil society, coevolving the legitimation crisis of the state and the halt of the fourth nuclear complex in 2014. Based on the analysis described in detail below, I conclude that the relationship between nuclear power and the legitimacy problem in Taiwan was a complex dynamic process of political, economic, cultural, environmental, and social conflicts, rather than a one-dimensional technical or economic problem.

6.2 Three Components of Nuclear Risk Society in Taiwan From 1980 to 2014, the year that completion of the fourth nuclear project was finally halted, nuclear power usually provided more than 20% of annual electricity supply (Taipower, 2017). As described in Chapter 3, nuclear power has been touted as a crux of Taiwan’s development. Taiwan’s faith in nuclear power has been traced in previous chapters to three deep factors: (1) faith in the ideology of progress, (2) belief

168 that nuclear risk is manageable, and (3) acceptance of the view that a key motive of modern society is to secure economic growth. Through these three factors, nuclear power has been justified in Taiwan for decades.

6.2.1 Faith in the Ideology of Progress According to Byrne and Hoffman (1996:13-14), energy plays a central role in the ideology of progress, which equates social success with national wealth and scientific and technological progress literally powered by modern energy. In this regard, electric power plants symbolize ‘abundant energy machines’ which realize the dream of cheap energy (Byrne and Rich, 1986). Taiwan’s faith in progress through nuclear power could be seen through Hu’s personal experience (Hu, 1995:1):

I believe many people in the 70s had similar feelings as me: under the great [KMT] government, we had a wonderful dream and expectation of scientific progress … National Chin Hua University [with the first nuclear research department] had imperishable glory like Armstrong who took the first step on the moon … under the [KMT] education, until the early 80s, using scientific progress against communists and rebuilding the confidence of citizens was a popular idea. And environmental concerns could be put off.

The belief in progress has been popular in Taiwanese society from the 1970s and expressed itself again in the development of nuclear power. For example, the ‘Ten Major Construction Projects’ of 1973 listed Taiwan’s first nuclear power plant, even though construction began back in 1971. Although the operation of that plant did not begin until 1978, the progressive nuclear symbol had already influenced many people, as Hu stated (1995). The faith in progress and nuclear power can be seen in a 1983 survey: 65% of the participants believed that Taiwan needs nuclear power while 97% of the participants knew little or nothing about nuclear power, and 46% did not know that two nuclear complexes were built already (Hsiao, 1987: 228-231). A nuclear

169 scholar told me “Yes, in the 1970s, nuclear power represents progressive and affluence. I and many of my classmates gave up the chance to study in National Taiwan University (the best University in Taiwan); we went to National Chin Hua University for studying nuclear engineering”.

In the 2000 nuclear debate, the ideology of progress could be easily found in the pro-nuclear argument. For example, the KMT declaration that no one would dare to live in Taiwan without sufficient energy supply relied on nuclear power to bolster its claim (Office of Sustainable Development, 2001: 88). Ironically, nuclear power was also promoted as a kind of progressive ‘green energy’ to achieve carbon reduction. The KMT claimed that without the fourth nuclear complex, carbon emissions per capita would be more than the target set up by Kyoto protocol by 2020 (Office of Sustainable Development, 2001: 53). 72 The KMT argued that Taiwan’s national image would be damaged or Taiwan might be punished by the international community due to its high carbon emissions in the future if it did not adopt nuclear power. Therefore, the KMT argued that nuclear power was necessary as Taiwan wanted to be a reliable partner of the international community (Office of Sustainable Development, 2001: 80). This carbon reduction card continues to be played today by Taiwan’s nuclear proponents.

A month before the Fukushima crisis, a professor of nuclear engineering at National Tsing Hua University stated “The growing global population and the pursuit of material civilization will regime more energy in the future. Sooner or later, fossil fuels will be not enough for supporting human civilization” (quoted in Lee, 2011: 108). He suggested nuclear power was the only option for the further development of human civilization.

72 Taiwan was not a signatory country of Kyoto Protocol.

170

Most Taiwanese people agree with the view that Chiang Chin-kuo was a dictator, according to Wu’s survey (2008). Nonetheless, Chiang Chin-kuo is also remembered by most people as a leader who brought riches and security to Taiwan, as part of his ‘economic progress’. Importantly, the KMT has portrayed Chiang Chin-kuo as a leader who worked with experts and scientists, rather than making decisions based on irrational public opinion or the requests from greedy business leaders (as was done by leaders after the martial law era). According to Chiu (2017), many technocrats also harbored the same ‘New China’ dream as Chiang Chin-kuo, aiming to build a rich Taiwan as an example for mainland China, which even followed this pathway in recent years, focusing on scientific and technological progress.

Nuclear power perfectly aligned with Chiang’s progressive image. In 2016, even as KMT was collapsing, KMT chairwoman Hung Hsiu-chu asserted that the party needed to revive ‘Chiang Chin-kuonization’ and criticized DPP’s ‘no nuclear homeland’ proposal for hampering Taiwan’s development and progress.73 For Hung and others, nuclear power, had become a symbol of progress, embedded into their lifeworld. In fact, faith in the ideology of progress has become a sacred cow in parts of Taiwan’s public discourse.

All major political leaders after Chiang Chin-kuo did not dare to question the necessity of large scale, centralized technology and heavy industry. For example, from President Lee to President Ma, Taiwan’s presidents based their versions of ‘Major Construction Projects’ on Chiang Chin-kuo’s ‘Major Ten Construction Projects’. DPP president Chen Suei-bien even proposed a ‘New Ten Major Construction Projects’ in

73 KMT lost badly in national elections after the occupation of the Legislative Yuan in 2014 by the Sunflower Movement.

171 2003 to win the support of the public after his fiasco in the 2001 nuclear debate.

Under these circumstances, it is not surprising that a segment of society consistently favored nuclear power – until the Fukushima crisis. Some people could not imagine how Taiwan could support its energy-intensive industries and ‘major constructions’ without nuclear power. President Chen (2000-2008) proudly touted his outstanding progress in the semi-conductor industry and hi-tech parks, and many business leaders and Taipower pushed for more nuclear power to support energy- intensive development, making it nearly impossible for DPP to convince the public to stop the fourth nuclear power plant’s construction. In this regard, DPP’s failure to gain the traction on the nuclear issue during the ‘lost decade’ (2001-2011) was partially due to among Taiwan’s elite of the faith in the ideology of progress. Elite faith in the ideology of progress was linked to the pursuit of rapid economic growth and furnished a key reason that nuclear power was championed. Nuclear power was regarded as an abundant energy machine which can support the economic growth from high energy- intensive industries, including hi-tech business in the information and communications sectors (Byrne and Rich, 1986; Byrne and Hoffman, 1996).

Faith in the ideology of progress even penetrated into some religious circles in Taiwan. Even after the Fukushima crisis, a major Buddhist leader, Hsing Yun, stated “Disasters are inevitable in the society … people have to rely on themselves for their safety. For the progress of the country, the fourth nuclear complex cannot be terminated due to some side effects” (quoted in Fang, 2014).

6.2.2 Nuclear Risk is Manageable The 1985 explosion in the newly-built third nuclear complex triggered the first significant challenge to nuclear power in Taiwan’s public discourse. It took

172 Taipower a year to repair the damage and triggered many questions because Taipower attempted to hide the information about the explosion from the beginning. Environmental protests sharply increased during the mid-1980s, indirectly contributing to the rise of an anti-nuclear discourse. Most of the anti-nuclear sentiment was aimed at the fourth nuclear power plant project, and anti-nuclear groups often used nuclear accidents to strengthen their anti- nuclear argument.

Facing this kind of protest, proponents of nuclear power developed their defense using the principles of rational risk management. Generally speaking, officials from Taipower and the Atomic Energy Council (AEC) touted the safety of nuclear power by citing the low probability of nuclear core meltdown. According to Taipower’s calculations, the chance of nuclear meltdown in Taiwan was between 2×10-5 times/year and 6×10-5 times/year (Sunyunsuan Foundation, 2000: 60). Therefore, nuclear officials argued that the nuclear risk perceived by the public was much higher than actual scientific risk. Also, Taiwan’s nuclear experts believed there was no need to single out nuclear power as dangerous because the probability of nuclear meltdown was much lower than the probability of accidents occurring in other industrial activities and other technologies. The AEC stated that only 50 people died from acute radiation syndrome in the Chernobyl crisis, and concluded that the health impacts of the Chernobyl crisis were not as horrible as people imagined (Republic of China, Atomic Energy Council, 2005). During the 2000 nuclear debate, the KMT argued that no one ever died from the operational accidents of the light water reactor (the same type in the fourth nuclear) in the world, concluding that the safety of the fourth nuclear was not a problem (Chiang, 2001). KMT also argued that many people were affected by air pollution from industrial plants annually, while only few people died from the operation of the nuclear complexes. KMT thus sarcastically questioned when DPP would close all polluting fossil power plants in Taiwan (Office of Sustainable Development, 2001: 92).

173 Taiwan’s nuclear officials adopted the so-called ‘defense in depth’ strategy: the plants were outfitted with several levels and measures of protection (barriers) to prevent the release into the environment of radioactive materials from nuclear accidents (International Atomic Energy Agency, 1996; Republic of China, Atomic Energy Council, 2013). Defense in depth also includes the use of access controls, redundant and diverse key safety functions, and emergency response measures. The approach links prevention, monitoring, and mitigating actions to cover all safety-related components and structures. According to defense in depth, the environmental and health impacts associated with the release of radioactive or hazardous materials will be minimized if not eliminated entirely.

Following this logic, Taiwan’s nuclear officials did not worry about minor accidents at the existing three nuclear complexes; they claimed such accidents provided lessons for improving nuclear safety. Also, Taiwan’s nuclear officials believed that accumulated experience would contribute to the low probability of a serious accident. For example, a Taipower official, Cui, was proud that he violated AEC’s order by not repairing a problematic turbine in the second nuclear complex and postponed the repair for a while. No accident occurred as Cui predicted. Cui claimed “Textbook knowledge is not enough, you need on site experience” (quoted in Taipower, 2011: 59).

Taiwan’s nuclear officials were not troubled by the Three Mile Island and

Chernobyl accidents. By their account, these crises provided precious experience from which the nuclear industry could learn to avoid similar accidents in the future (Sunyunsuan Foundation, 2000: 71). The KMT attributed the Chernobyl crisis to human errors combined with the flawed Soviet RBMK reactor design, a position similar to the ones stated after Chernobyl (International Atomic Energy Agency, 1992; World Nuclear Association, 2016d). Because of their different reactor design and based on experience

174 running reactors, Taiwan’s nuclear officials concluded similar accidents and casualties would not occur (Chiu and Chen, 2001).

After the Fukushima crisis, a nuclear scholar at National Tsing Hua University and consultant to Taipower claimed: (Liberty Times, 2013/5/12):

It [the Fukushima crisis] in fact is good for the development of nuclear power. If the Japanese government can clean up the aftermath well, rational countries will endorse nuclear engineers.

The KMT cabinet promised to make additional improvements in the nuclear complexes to protect against tsunamis and earthquakes after the Fukushima crisis to ensure that Taiwan’s nuclear power plants would not experience a meltdown. Also, the government conducted more geographic research near by the existing nuclear complexes and the site of the fourth nuclear complexes. The government claimed risks of accidents due to natural events could be minimized by increased safety precautions on the part of the nuclear industry and government thus the risks could be managed (Lee, 2013).

Regarding the issue of nuclear waste, Taiwan’s nuclear officials were proud that they developed technology to burn and consolidate low level radiation waste, which were stored in nuclear complexes after the Tao people rejected nuclear waste in 1996.

“Nuclear researchers of INER make most nuclear waste disappear; they are magicians of ‘nuclear reduction” (quoted in AEC, 2013). Also, a nuclear professor in National Tsing Hua University did not view low-level radiation waste as a threat that the Tao people did. He stated “artificial uranium will decay to harmless levels after 2,000 years. Compared to other chemicals which will not decay, nuclear waste was better” (Shih, 2000). In essence, nuclear officials and academics both viewed the waste as something

175 that could be handled, rather than as a burden on society.

Furthermore, Taiwan’s nuclear proponents believed that once the government could find a location with the proper geological structure, all nuclear waste could be stored underground for 200,000 years and not affect the environment or human beings in the future. The former director of the Institute of Nuclear Energy Research (INER) stated, “nuclear waste is not a problem, the true problem is the concept of not in my backyard”—that people did not accept the value and benefits of nuclear power(quoted in Modern Law Research Foundation, 2000: 95). In any case, the KMT was confident that advanced countries such as the United States would share its advanced technology with Taiwan for the management of nuclear waste, so there was no need to worry about the potential technical problems regarding the management of nuclear waste (Office of Sustainable Development, 2001: 93).

6.2.3 Society’s Responsibility to Secure Economic Growth Economic growth, as a kind of modern responsibility on the part of governments and businesses, has been a frequent argument used by Taiwan’s nuclear proponents. As discussed previously, the 1973 oil crisis shocked Taiwan’s growing industrial sector. Although the construction of the first nuclear complex had begun in

1971, the oil crisis strengthened the image of nuclear power as a stable and cheap energy source. Furthermore, after Taiwan lost international recognition in the U.N.,

Taiwan’s nuclear proponents suggested that importing conventional energy resources, such as coal, oil, or natural gas, might be disrupted by China. Taiwan’s nuclear proponents thus argued that nuclear power could be a superior energy source for Taiwan’s economic development because it relied on the United States, which was not likely to disrupt Taiwan’s energy security.

176 In the 1980s, losses incurred due to increasing environmental and labor protests troubled Taiwan’s business leaders. Taiwan had been transformed into an export-oriented country during the 1970s and 1980s under a new development strategy. The rapid economic growth in this period was accompanied by the construction of three nuclear power plants. For Taiwanese capitalists, the cheap electricity produced by the plants was an asset they could not lose. As mentioned, in 1985, nuclear power provided 52% electricity of the island. Taiwan’s political economic elites could not overlook the fact that the cost of production of Taiwanese goods and services would increase without nuclear power or if the fourth nuclear project were to be cancelled. They had already compromised on some environmental and labor movement issues. In the famous public statement, ‘The Wrath from Capitalists’ (see Chapter 3), eight major business leaders complained that their businesses were dying due to the irrational demands from labor and environmental movements. They asserted that they would only support political candidates who could create a rational business climate.

In the 1990s, Taiwanese manufacturers faced increasing challenges from China, and the 1998 Asian financial crisis, together allowed nuclear proponents to easily justify nuclear power from an economic perspective. Nuclear supporters argued that the fourth nuclear project promised to increase Taiwan’s competitiveness in response to globalization. A report in 2000 indicated that the country’s electricity prices would increase between 4.7% and 5.4% by 2004 if the fourth nuclear project was terminated

(Sunyunsuan Foundation, 2000: 120). Another report indicated that reserve electricity capacity would fall to 3.3% by 2009 without the fourth nuclear complex (Chiang, 2000: 6), and Taipower suggested that 15% of reserve electricity capacity was necessary. Also, the KMT claimed that foreign investment would be affected. KMT argued that foreign companies would lose faith in Taiwan’s business climate if the DPP government terminated the fourth nuclear project. According to the National Policy Foundation (a

177 KMT think tank), at least twenty business leaders from construction, automobile, and semi-conductor companies supported the fourth nuclear project in 2000 (Office of Technology and Economy, 2000: 70-73).

During the ‘lost decade’ (2001-2011) of anti-nuclear sentiment, nuclear power was promoted as a means to responding the global challenges. In particular, Taiwan’s energy-intensive semiconductor industry, promoted as Taiwan’s future, grew rapidly in this period. The message taken from rapid development was that much more electricity would be needed and the anti-nuclear stance of some civil society groups appeared to be irresponsible because it endangered Taiwan’s hottest industry. In addition, carbon reduction also was trumpeted as a sound argument for pro-nuclear development. Indeed, some nuclear power proponents argued that Taiwan’s primary ‘green energy’ option was nuclear-generated electricity. Only this ‘green’ source could achieve goals of carbon reduction without hampering the economy.

Although President Chen failed to terminate the fourth nuclear project in 2001, the plant could not be completed during his presidency because Taipower ran into technical problems during construction. The onset of the 2008 global financial crisis presented a chance for fourth nuclear complex proponents to suppress opposition, because nuclear supporters argued that cheap nuclear energy would be needed for Taiwan to overcome the harsh global economic situation. As discussed, the budget of the fourth nuclear complex increased to almost $10 billion by 2011. Taipower argued that it would go bankrupt if the fourth nuclear complex could not get online (Wu, 2014). As discussed, even some DPP politicians held a pro-nuclear position during Chen’s presidency. Securing the economy has been a handy argument for decades for Taiwan’s nuclear proponents (Huang, 2009; Chen et al, 2014). On their account, “anti-nuclear” was equal to “anti-economic growth”, and thus was irrational and irresponsible.

178 Even the Orchid Island, nuclear waste disposal site was also justified by the government as a facility which brought the Tao people economic benefits. The government provided the island with a series of subsidies and a modern electric system. For nuclear proponents, the Tao people were too irrational and ignorant to recognize the importance of economic growth associated with nuclear power (see Chapter 4). Through these and other subsidies to locals near nuclear complexes, including the unfinished fourth plant, Taipower portrayed nuclear power plants as generous partners with local residents, supporting local communities and businesses (Taipower, 2011).

In summary, nuclear proponents in Taiwan justified nuclear power through above three components. Under these normative values, nuclear power in Taiwan was promoted through money and power. However, as outlined in the next section, the ‘lost decade’ (see Chapter 5) of the anti-nuclear movement can be viewed as the breeding ground for resurgent critique.

6.3 Systematically Distorted Communications Although the DPP and New Party brought the anti-nuclear battle into the Legislative Yuan, the fourth nuclear project reopened during Lee’s presidency (1988- 2000). Lee’s action also reflected the tension between state legitimacy and nuclear power.

Even as activists disclosed an increasing number of errors and abuses within the nuclear industry, Lee maintained the pursuit of nuclear power for securing the KMT’s legitimacy

(Ho, 2003; 2006).

Under the wave of democratization in the 1980s, KMT’s legitimacy gradually came to depend more and more upon an alignment with Taiwanese capitalists. Unlike Chiang Kai-shek’s family, President Lee and the leadership of KMT could not divinize themselves through propaganda to foster their legitimacy in a more democratic

179 society.74 According to Habermas, the modern state must justify its legitimacy by steering the economic system using rational calculation instead of relying on the personal cults of political leaders. In line with this argument, under Lee’s administration, the developmental state strategy was changed. Deregulation and privatization became practical measures for Lee to co-opt local politicians during his fights with conservative KMT politicians in the 1990s.

Ironically, the newly established DPP also embraced privatization, using it as a political ideology to dismiss the errors, inefficiency and corruption of state-owned and KMT-owned enterprises, including Taipower (Chen et al., 1991). The DPP gradually lost its will to fight against nuclear beginning in the mid-1990s. In addition, when the DPP won more positions in the political system, most DPP leaders began to distance themselves from popular movements, like the anti-nuclear movement (Ho, 2003, 2006; Grano, 2014).

The nuclear debate in the 1990s showed that state legitimacy and the symbol of progress— nuclear power--can become vulnerable to anti-nuclear activism for challenging state’s legitimacy. As mentioned, the slogan ‘Anti-nuclear is for anti- dictatorship’ was touted by the DPP in the 1990s. However, in the end, the administrative power pushed through the fourth nuclear project with the endorsement of representative democracy (Legislative Yuan) during Lee’s presidency. This may be the fundamental reason that anti-nuclear activists began to pursue a national referendum on the fourth nuclear project as an expression of civil rights.

74 For example, until the early 1990s, Chiang Kai-shek was described as ‘a saver of all human beings’ in textbooks.

180 When President Chen (2000-2008) tried to terminate the fourth nuclear power project in 2000, he immediately suffered a legitimation crisis. First, the power of law, normatively supported by the representative democracy, did not allow for administrators to terminate the fourth nuclear project, which already had been approved by the Legislative Yuan. In this regard, the pan-blue coalition’s claim that President Chen caused a constitutional crisis was not entirely without merit. Second, President Chen did not attempt to hold a national referendum to justify his anti-nuclear decision. Instead, he based his decision on the work of a reassessment committee, even though the committee did not reach a clear conclusion on the fourth nuclear power project. Nuclear proponents, including most business leaders, used economic growth to support arguments in favor of increased nuclear power in Taiwan—nuclear power promised to secure people’s living by creating a better business and investment climate at the cost of creating victims or potential victims of nuclear power. For nuclear proponents, the value from nuclear power was ultimately larger than its risks. That value outweighed the disutility of not allowing the people to weigh into the decision-making about the potential for harms associated with new nuclear complex projects.

As a result, when the pan-blue fought back, the DPP resorted to moral arguments to support their anti-nuclear stance, dismissing nuclear power as an evil product which might destroy the future of Taiwan. However, the DPP did not try to develop its ‘moral stance’ with a comprehensive argument in the public sphere during the

2000 reassessment because DPP wanted to build a ‘rational image’ in the nuclear debate (Ho, 2006).

Nor did the DPP attempt to investigate the administrative mistakes and errors of the project. Instead, Chen’s reassessment focused on technical issues and a cost-benefit evaluation. According to Ho (2006), during the reassessment, pro-nuclear and anti-

181 nuclear experts basically could not agree with the numbers provided by the other side and accused each other of relying on false science. A similar situation had also occurred in the 1980s and 1990s. In general, the pro-nuclear side asserted the debate should be based on rational, scientific, and objective evidence, while anti-nuclear side questioned the validity of ‘science’ and ‘objectivity’ (Hu, 1995). In this regard, the two sides could not reach meaningful consensus as Habermas suggested, because most of the time, the pro- nuclear side was constrained by economic reason (money) without realizing that their argument was distorted by money and power (the power of law, which requests the government to build the fourth nuclear passed by the Legislative Yuan).

According to Ho (2002, 2006), providing the ‘moral argument’ after a ‘rational reassessment’ may have caused the DPP to lose its credibility in the 2000 debate. Moreover, in the aftermath of 1998 Asian financial crisis and 2000 Dot-com bubble, President Chen’s decision on the fourth nuclear complex was described by the

KMT as the words of an irresponsible opportunist who did not care about the economy. Even though President Chen embraced business power after the 2000-2001 nuclear debate, the DPP could not get rid of the stigma of being ‘irrational’ and ‘anti-business’ during his presidency (Editorial, 2009).

In the following years, the construction of the fourth nuclear complex proceeded as per plan. Anti-nuclear activists turned their attention to promoting the launch of the Referendum Act, trying to grapple the high participation threshold requested by the law. In this regard, the civil right of voting on important political issues was suppressed by representative democracy, as the Legislative Yuan justified the high participation threshold in the Referendum Act. Moreover, obtaining cheap electricity from nuclear power also became an appealing argument because the energy-intensive semi-conductor industry grew rapidly during Chen’s rule. Facing the challenge from

182 China, dismissing the fourth nuclear complex became an even more impractical and irrational position in Taiwan’s public sphere.

According to Lai, Wei-chieh, the president of GCAA, a Gonliao resident told him that Taipower followed a policy of ‘dividing and conquering’ its opponents: “First they divided pro-nuclear and anti-nuclear people, then they bribed anti-nuclear people, for those who could not be bribed, Taipower sent gangsters to threaten their lives…for those who dare to risk their lives…Taipower simply ignore them because only few people remained” (quoted in Lai, 2005). In this regard, Taipower distorted public communication through money and power as Habermas outlined (Habermas, 1987, Chapters 6 and 7:113-300).

Although accidents, corruption scandals, and the projected cost of the fourth nuclear project increased over time, the state supported the fourth nuclear project as a solution for saving the economy until the 2011 Fukushima crisis. This case is in line with Hagermas’s and Beck’s theories. In the modern state, economic systems prevail over political systems and general public often complies with policies favored by business power. These policies were enforced by administrative power which contributed an aura of state legitimacy. In the next section I look at the evidence of

Taiwan’s nuclear risk as a catalyst in the post-Fukushima era, contributing to what Beck describes as the ‘clash of risk cultures’ (Beck, 2006:337).

6.4 The Three Conflicts Caused by Mega-risk Related to Taiwan’s Nuclear Power As I mentioned in Chapter 2, Beck identified that three perspectives: irrationality of risk calculus, technocracy, and organized irresponsibility of modern mega- risks, would cause people withdraw the faith and loyalty in the modern state. The

183 phenomena Beck calls ‘clash of risk cultures’, which thus contribute to the crisis of state legitimacy in Taiwan’s nuclear power case.

6.4.1 Irrationality of Risk Calculus The previous chapters provide empirical evidence of Beck’s irrationality of risk calculus. Even in the 1980s, the newly-built Taiwanese nuclear complexes encountered a series of unforeseen problems. According to Beck’s thesis, this ‘inability to know’ made it impossible to calculate the risks of nuclear power then and continues to do so now. As a driving force for social evolution, scientific innovation creates unknown outcomes, environmental and social consequences. Indeed, the unknown is the very essence of scientific development, much of which cannot be predicted solely on the basis of past knowledge (Kuhn, 1962). Consider, for example, the advanced model of control rods that caused problems in Taiwan’s second nuclear complex in 1988 due to their flawed design. Nuclear proponents argue that these types of nuclear issues provide updated knowledge for better risk calculation and management in the future. However, this kind of argument simultaneously calls into question the validity of rational probabilistic risk assessment, as it acknowledges there is a possibility of unforeseeable accidents. It also underscores the issue with risk assessment—it assumes probabilities for failure of nuclear complexes based on past experience with particular pieces of equipment under specific sets of conditions—combinations which can never occur again in the future. Adding new technology into the mix complicates the calculations enormously (Beck, 1992a; Chou, 2013; Rosa, et al., 2014).

Can past nuclear accidents generate ‘better’ knowledge for risk calculation? Many times even nuclear experts could not agree on the cause of nuclear accidents in Taiwan. From leakages in the circulation system to the blackout of the reactor area,

184 experts had different explanations as to the root causes. Some nuclear experts even lost their faith in the safety of the unfinished fourth nuclear complex before the construction was completed because of numerous errors and accidents (see Chapter 4). In this regard, even if all nuclear experts were in what Habermas calls the ‘ideal speech situation’ and could honestly exchange arguments with each other, they may never have able to reach meaningful agreement. Too many unknowns complicated the picture. Taipower redesigned the whole fourth plant based on the knowledge of its own experts, but the company could not demonstrate that the redesigned plant was safer than the original design because a series of accidents that had occurred during the construction had already been disclosed.

The irrationality of risk calculus can also be seen in the fact that currently all spent fuel rods in Taiwan continue to be stored indoors in pools located in existing nuclear complexes. Spent fuel removed from a reactor is stored in a water-filled spent fuel pool in order to allow residual amounts of heat to be released and provide shielding from its radioactivity. The storage pools in the first and second nuclear complexes are already overloaded with spent fuel rods, and the same situation is likely to happen in the third nuclear complex, because these spent rods have not been moved to outdoor ‘dry cask storage’, the construction of which has been postponed due to public opposition(Control Yuan, 2013). As of 2016, Taipower has not found a location where the local council has approved of dry cask storage. Taipower built dry cask storage at the first and second nuclear complexes, both located in New Taipei City (Taipei County), even though New Taipei City did not approve the testing of the storage due to public opposition after the Fukushima crisis. At the same time, leaks near the spent fuel pools in the first nuclear complex were found between 2009 and 2013. Taipower and the AEC came to different conclusions about the cause, but both claimed there was no solid evidence that the leaks actually came from spent fuel pools (Control Yuan, 2013). The

185 risk of the overloaded pools thus was not included in Taipower’s original risk calculation, because there was no similar case in the world.

The failure of risk calculus leads to the failure of financial calculation regarding the cost of nuclear power. As discussed, unforeseeable technical problems increased the budget of the fourth nuclear project to a previously unimaginable level— almost $10 billion (not including the cost of decommissioning the plant) (Lin, et al.,

2012).

The complexity of nuclear risk leads to uncertainty in risk management. Through 2016, the Taiwan government had not provided comprehensive explanations for the radioactive contaminated buildings and roads discovered more than two decades before. The related research into human health impacts focused exclusively on victims who participated in governmental research and to date has not reached any agreement on how human health was impacted by the radioactive buildings (Liu, et al., 2015). For example, some doctors with the AEC claimed no significant impact was found among the residents in the radioactive buildings, while some researchers found health impacts due to radioactive buildings (Liu, et al., 2015, also see Chapter 4).

In the post-Fukushima era, imported and potentially radioactive Japanese foods spread panic among the public. Even though the government banned the import of

Japanese foods from the Fukushima and the surrounding five prefectures, in March 2015 it was found that some traders illegally imported 294 kinds of questionable Japanese foods into Taiwan under counterfeit origin labels (Hsu, 2015). By then it was too late for the government to trace or investigate the potential health impact of foods already sold. On the other hand, China not only banned all food imported from 10 high-risk prefectures, but also demanded a radiation detection report and government-issued place

186 of origin for food items from other areas of Japan (Hsu, 2015).

Ironically, a few months after the counterfeit origin labels scandal, the Taiwan Food and Drug Administration said it was considering lifting the ban on foodstuffs from five prefectures in Japan, since a poll conducted by the agency indicated support for the proposed deregulation (Chen, 2015). Nuclear risk from Japanese foods triggered wide public attention because of the economic affinity between Taiwan and

Japan, which is the second-largest source of imports to Taiwan.75

The imported Japanese foods issue reflects Beck’s point that risk management is no longer a domestic issue, but a global one. The public now has to worry about nuclear risk from other countries, because the Taiwan government may lack the capacity to coordinate with them. Because Taiwan does not have state legitimacy in the international community, coordination with other countries would likely rely more on the use of realistic politics than legitimate normative principles.76 In this respect, Taiwan also generated an incalculable nuclear risk for the international community.

Because these risks constitute “unknown unknowns” or “unknown unawareness”, they are impossible to prevent (Beck, 2006: 335). However, the Taiwan government still harnessed nuclear power based on their rational calculation, even though the reputation of scientific rational calculation was tarnished over time. As a result, a technocracy grew up to enforce nuclear policies.

75 After DPP returned to power in 2016, China threatened to close business opportunity for Taiwan because DPP rejected to declare that Taiwan is a part of China. This may be the reason that DPP proposed to lift the ban on foodstuffs from five prefectures in Japan in end of 2016. DPP may want to secure more business with Japan as economic loss in China looks inevitable. 76 In Beck’s view, this means countries pursue their own national interests as the priority at the cost of sacrificing normative principles such as creating pollution or risk in other countries (Beck, 2005). For example, Taiwan attempted to transport nuclear waste to North Korea in the 1990s (Ku, 2013).

187 6.4.2 Technocratic Threats to Democratic Governance The rise of technocracy in Taiwan can be traced back to the post-war era. At the time, the KMT eagerly wanted to rebuild Taiwan’s economy as a means of securing its legitimacy. Scientists and technocrats were held high esteem, and Taipower, as the only state-owned power company in Taiwan, was seen as vital for its economic future. Under the guidance of U.S. experts, Taipower quickly rebuilt its capacity to support the industrial transformation in the 1950s, and dominated Taiwan’s energy and electricity policies from that time on. While Taipower appeared merely to be providing scientific/technical solutions to power supply issues, in fact, the company performed almost all of the related financial calculations itself or its subsidies. As a result, Taipower has gained immense political power as a unit under the Department of Economic Affairs.

According to Byrne and Rich (1986), modern energy research and development was dominated by large –scale programs during the 1950s to 1980s and could only be managed by large techno-bureaucracies, insulated from review or change. This description of a techno-bureaucracy fits Taiwan’s nuclear industry. Although Taipower fell under the apparent supervision of the Ministry of Economic Affairs, Taipower’s immense financial resources allowed the company to attract researchers from academic and research institutes. By 2009-2011, Taipower funded about $1.3 billion’s worth of research projects (Fang and Tsai, 2013:85). Even the AEC, which was supposed to supervise Taipower, received research funding from the company (Liu, 2013).

Furthermore, every year Taipower spent roughly $1.3 billion on public relations campaigns targeted at local politicians or residents (Fang and Tsai, 2013:85). Needless to say, the business contract provided Taipower with a useful tool to co-opt political and economic elites: despite the corruption and accidents associated with the fourth nuclear project for decades, Taipower won enough political support to last until the post- Fukushima era.

188 The technocracy supporting Taiwan’s nuclear power is composed of the relations between the state, academia, and industry. Following Eisenhower's ‘Peaceful Use of Atomic Energy’ proposal in the 1950s, the U.S. government supported Taiwan’s fundamental research on nuclear energy. In 1955, Taipower began to cultivate the first generation of nuclear experts, experts educated in the United States. Taiwan’s AEC was established in the same year. In 1956, the Institute of Nuclear Science was established in Taiwan’s National Tsing Hua University, with the intent of cooperating with Taipower on nuclear research (Chen, 2013; Ho, 2015).

Information about nuclear power research was highly sensitive and the coordination between the related government institutions was kept secret. According to Lin (2014), even nuclear scientists, diplomats, and military officials often did not share information.

Many first-generation Taiwanese nuclear experts had graduated from Taiwan’s National Tsing Hua University and the military college Chung Cheng Institute of Technology, named after the official first name of President Chiang Kai-shek. In fact, almost all nuclear officials in the government came from these two institutions (Chen, 2013). A clan culture thus became embedded into Taiwan’s nuclear industry (Chen,

2013; Ho, 2015). With the development of nuclear power, nuclear experts from Tsing Hua University gradually gained control of the leadership of Taipower (Liu, 2013). Many officials in the AEC also trained at this University. The so-called ‘Tsing Hua nuclear clan’ dominated both Taipower and the AEC (Chen, 2013). As a result, Taiwan lacked independence in supervision of nuclear power—the same clan that promoted nuclear power and the construction of the nuclear complexes also oversaw the industry and its regulation.

189 The AEC oversight failed to prevent a series of major accidents (Gau and Zhao, 2012). In the aftermath of these accidents, the Council continued to guarantee public safety through its ‘rational calculations’ and none of the related officials were found guilty of wrongdoing. In addition, the Legislative Yuan did not pass a law to prevent the retired officials in Taipower from taking jobs in private businesses related to nuclear power until 2012. As a result, incidents of corruption in Taipower, including the nuclear power department, were frequently revealed (Control Yuan, 2011; Lin and Lin,

2012; Wang, 2012), actual corruption stories and evidence reported in research.

As mentioned earlier, the AEC initially tried to cover up the discovery of radioactive buildings and roads. Additionally, the AEC did not provide consistent and comprehensive explanations of nuclear accidents but merely reassured the public of nuclear complex safety through monitoring data. The example succinctly portrays technocracy in Taiwan’s nuclear industry.

In May 2014, a retired Taipower technician, Lee Kui-lin, claimed that in the early 1980s, while working at a Taipower hydro plant, suffered from leukemia. Taipower’s intelligence unit threatened him and pressured him to return to work and assigned him to responsibilities at the second nuclear power plant. According to Lee,

Taipower later not only forced him to work in high radioactive zones without protection but also forbade him to wear a radiation monitoring badge. Lee also claimed many workers in nuclear complexes did not receive proper protection and Taipower and AEC ignored employee’s health issues on purpose for decades (The Legislative Yuan Official Gazette Department, 2014: 237-238). In a court case, Taipower claimed that Lee’s exposure to radiation fell below the acceptable dose limit. Thus Taipower argued it bore no responsibility for Lee’s disease. Even so, Lee still won $40,000 in compensation in 2015 (Yang et al., 2015).

190 A significant factor in Taiwan’s nuclear technocracy is the power of definition. From the acceptable limits of radiation exposure to the safety standards of nuclear complexes, the AEC and Taipower justified their decisions in the name of rational scientific calculation. The government commonly dismissed the perceived risk of a nuclear accident in the minds of the public. Even though these nuclear experts did not substantiate their argument about valid knowledge at the level of epistemology, they applied their political power through the enforcement of positive law without ‘committed reason’ ( Hu, 1995; Sunyunsuan Foundation, 2000; Lin, 2014). In general, Taiwanese technocrats were incapable and unwilling to argue what is/ought to be real knowledge for dealing with risk but tried to convince people with claims of ‘scientific rationality’(Chou, 2014). In this regard, the end result was distorted communication on nuclear risk.

For example, after the Fukushima crisis, the Taiwanese government conducted new research on seismic faults near all nuclear complex sites. After the investigation, it was found by the government that the first and second nuclear power plants were located five to seven kilometers (km) away from the Shanjiao Fault in the Kinshan coastal area. The site of the fourth nuclear power plant is less than five km away from six inactive faults. The anti-earthquake design measures 0.3g (g = measure of peak ground acceleration, PGA) for the first nuclear power plant and 0.4g for the second, third, and fourth plants.77 The four plants are far weaker than the anti- earthquake design in Japan, which is typically 0.6g or more (World Nuclear

Association, 2016c). Even though some NGOs and geographical experts worried about the safety of all nuclear complexes due to earthquakes, the AEC claimed that the safety of all nuclear complexes, including the unfinished fourth one, could be guaranteed after

77 According to World Nuclear Association (2016c), PGA is a parameter for earthquake engineering. PGA is measured in Galileo units – Gal (cm/sec2) or g, the force of gravity. 1 g = 980 Gal. South Korea's new APR-1400 reactor is designed to withstand 0.3g PGA, and in the United States the Diablo Canyon plant is designed for a 0.75g PGA.

191 seismic retrofitting, which was done by 2016 (Lin, 2011; The Legislative Yuan Official Gazette Department, 2013c: 372-415; AEC, 2016b). The guarantee of safety rests on or is only as good as the scientific/computer models used by the AEC and the engineers who designed the retrofits. There officials, however, are members of the Clan that designs, builds, and operates plants and, more broadly, is responsible for the industry’s evolution. There is no genuinely independent review of nuclear complex design, construction, and operation in Taiwan.

Many nuclear proponents, including many KMT Prime Ministers and Presidents, ironically (and incorrectly) cited Habermas’s term ‘rational communication’ to justify their arguments, while accusing the anti-nuclear side of irrationality (Wang, 1989, 1993a, 1993b; Hu, 1995; Ho, 2005; Fang, 2013; Lee and Chu, 2013). For a long time, anti-nuclear activists bore the stigma of irrational and anti-science opportunists. Beginning in the 1990s, each KMT cabinet claimed that nuclear power was a scientific issue and thus had to be left to nuclear experts making the rational decisions. It would be fair to say that even the DPP supporters in Taiwan were prone to this version of technocracy, especially with the wave of globalization. When the DPP used a reassessment that relied on rational scientific calculation in 2000, and then had to comply with the pro-nuclear side after 2001, its base supporters were not troubled by the DPP’s shifting stance on nuclear policies. Instead, because of the ties between nuclear power and securing the economy, most of the public did accept this wavering position between

2001and 2011. This phenomenon can be further analyzed from the perspective of organized irresponsibility.

6.4.3. Organized Irresponsibility Beck’s thesis regarding organized irresponsibility is examined in terms of Taiwan’s nuclear risk policies and ideology. First, the country adopts and pursues a risk

192 ideology on the basis of a calculus of risk despite the fundamental difficulties in making such calculations. Second, the country disregards victims of nuclear power. Third, the consequences of the first and second aspects of the ideologies led to the clash of risk cultures, in which the government sought to deny responsibility.

6.4.3.1 The Irresponsibility toward Future Generations The irresponsibility of the nuclear industry appears in the cost-benefit calculation method itself. First, the rational calculation used to conduct the cost-benefit analysis presumes that hazards in the future are less important than benefits in the present (Ackermen and Heinzerling, 2002). Mathematically, those lives and costs in the future are discounted in the calculations. In addition, the spatial and temporal levels of mega risk do not factor into the calculations (Beck, 1996). In particular, the radioactive materials used by the nuclear industry with their exceedingly long half-lives cannot be transformed into an acceptable level of risk. The consequences of nuclear development in

Taiwan cannot be calculated. For example, no one knows how many potentially radioactive materials exist in Taiwan. Even when the government launched an investigation, the health impacts were too complex to calculate. For existing radioactive buildings, researchers could not access all residents and different studies about the residents reached different conclusions. The accident in Dahan Creek revealed radiation leaks. It will not be possible to calculate the impact of exposure to radioactive particles in that water body for the millions of people who rely on that Creek as their water supplies.

As of this writing and as mentioned previously, the Taiwan government still has no final plan for the disposal of existing nuclear waste, including the spent fuel being stored at nuclear complexes. In the post-Fukushima era, no city in Taiwan has given

193 permission for the construction of a nuclear disposal site.78 This burden will fall on the shoulders of the next generation, who did not participate in the decision to create the nuclear complexes. Ironically, according to a survey in 2013, 98% of 1,071 participants did not even know that all the spent fuel was still being kept at nuclear complexes (Fang, 2013).

6.4.3.2 The Irresponsibility to Victims and the Environment

The irresponsibility towards victims of nuclear leaks and accidents, and the environment comes from what Beck refers to as “tragic individualization” (Beck, 2006:336). Using Habermas’ words, “tragic individualization” can be viewed as a kind of personal identity crisis expressed in the lack of care for victims, potential victims, and the environment. In Beck’s account, the impacts and side effects from mega risk are unmanageable. People in the risk society, including experts, have to rely on rational scientific institutions for managing risks, and yet they cannot entirely trust those same institutions as accidents and crises occur over time. According to a whistle blower who was also a sub-contractor on the fourth nuclear project, “in fact we all thought the fourth plant will not be done …many subcontractors could not even read the English construction specifications … there was no such electricity demand at the time …we just skimp through our work, grabbing easy money …but when I realized that politicians really wanted to operate it, I could not stop freaking out … I already moved out of Taipei …” (Chen, 2012). This interview highlights the degree to which the construction of a nuclear complex was totally out of control, even though being managed by the so called rational and scientific institutions (AEC and Taipower).

78 According to law, even Taipower wants to restore all nuclear waste in nuclear complexs, it will need the permission of the local governments (New Taipei City and Pingtung County).

194 Most individuals in risk society have only themselves to rely on for protection. The officials/experts who have the power to manage the risk view the loss of health/death of other people as an outcome of an objective, scientific, and natural process. For example, in the first well-known case of a radioactive contaminated building, Ming- Shen Mansion, members of the AEC declared that they could not be held responsible if the residents suffered mental problems. The AEC argued in court that “If the AEC chose to maintain silence [to cover up the case], they [the Ming-Shen Mansion residents] would have no mental problems” (quoted in Bih and Kou, 1999: 211). In other words, officials in the AEC did not feel that they were responsible for the health-related consequences of radioactive materials finding their way into the construction trades, and that was the reason they had kept silent for seven years until the media unveiled it in 1992 (Bih and Kou, 1999).

In Yengliao (in the Gongliao district), the site of the fourth nuclear power plant, many residents bitterly swallowed the subsidies from Taipower during the ‘lost decade’ (2001-2011) of the anti-nuclear movement. Some sought jobs at the construction site of the forth nuclear complex, because the local economy that relied on fishery and tourism business already suffered negatively from the construction of that fourth facility (Wang, 2011). Although most of the Yengliao residents remained anti-nuclear, many of them had no choice but to accept the money and comply with the directives of the state. The following story reflects their feelings. In 2010, when the Gongliao district held an exercise of evacuation for a possible nuclear accident, an NGO staff member found that several elders had not left as scheduled. Instead, they put on their protective clothing and stayed in a living room, celebrating with Karaoke. “Why are you singing? A nuclear crisis is occurring!” “So, we will die in a few minutes, we should have fun before we die” (quoted in Wang, 2011: 82). As Beck and Habermas identified, people may lose their

195 emotional balance when they have to live in a world which distorts their daily common sense (Beck, 2006: 336-337; Habermas, 1987:131-148).

The desperate situation also was felt by the Tao people and other indigenous groups (Tsai, 2007). The government viewed the Tao people as a group who supposed not to complain about nuclear waste because they were an undeveloped tribe and because Orchid Island was distant from Taiwan (Economic Daily News, 1975; Guan, 1991). The tragedy of the Tao people was dismissed for a long time in the mainstream media until the Fukushima crisis (Huang, 2015; Hsu, 2016).

After a long investigation, the cabinet of President Ma listed two locations as final nuclear disposal site candidates in March 2009. The first was in Daren Township in Taitung County, home to the indigenous Payuan people. The other was in Wuqiu Township, on a tiny island about 30 kilometers away from the east coast of

mainland China. Some believe that the AEC chose one township that was home to indigenous people and one that was not, in order to show its ‘fairness’ (Chin, 2012:21). It was later revealed that salinization from sea water had a high chance of eroding the disposal facilities in Wuqiu (Tsai, 2015). Hence, Daren became the de facto candidate.79

In 2009, Chen reported that a local politician in Daren had said that more than half of the residents (out of approximately 3,500 people) would accept the nuclear

waste in exchange for subsidies offered by the government, which might help address widespread poverty in the town (Chen, 2009).80 Despite support for the nuclear waste

79 In 2015, Tsai reported that the AEC and Taipower preferred to put nuclear final disposal sites in Hualien County, also a homeland of indigenous people, but Taipower claimed that ‘it is too early to discuss this issue’ (Tsai, 2015). 80 Poverty in Daren was mainly due to the nearby railroad construction in the 1990s that affected the water supply for irrigation. Farmers could no longer use that water for their crops (Chin, 2012: 12).

196 facility, the people elected the anti-nuclear waste candidate as mayor of Daren that year. According to Chen (2014), many Daren residents had questioned the government’s decision to choose their town as a nuclear waste disposal site. In particular, the story of the Tao people in Orchid Island caused many Daren residents to lose faith in the safety of the nuclear waste facility.

In the 1990s, tribal elders on Orchid Island played a significant role in mobilizing anti-nuclear waste protests by reviving their traditional culture. As mentioned in Chapter 4, the Tao people regarded nuclear waste as a kind of ‘evil spirit’ which disturbed the soul of their ancestors. In Daren, the traditional authority of tribal elders had been eroded by modern bureaucracy and politics. As a result, the pro-nuclear waste groups could and did win significant support in tribal meetings (Chin, 2012). On the other hand, the anti-nuclear waste groups gained the moral high ground by accusing the nuclear supporters of betraying indigenous traditions by cooperating with ‘outsiders’

(Chin, 2012). In addition, environmental groups not only mobilized local residents to protest, but also argued that the governmental subsidies were controlled and used by local politicians without adequate oversight, and residents were unlikely to see any benefit from them (Chin, 2012).

These examples provide evidence of social and environmental irresponsibility, especially involving Taiwan’s indigenous peoples. In addition, redressing the injustice to the Tao may result in injustice for other people, because future cabinet ministers may use their administrative powers to hold local referenda without the permission of a local council. Furthermore, in Daren’s case, allowing citizens from the entire Taitung County to vote in a local referendum on nuclear waste raises questions about whether residents far from the actual site should have the right decide the future of the Payuan people.

197 In summary, the cases of Orchid Island and Daren reflect the irresponsible attitude exercised against the indigenous peoples in Taiwan. The Tao were not only excluded from decision-making at the beginning, but they were also seen as the people who deserved the nuclear waste based on the geographic location of their land (far away from urban areas) and their political vulnerability. Generally speaking, from the martial law era onward, indigenous people suffered discrimination, usually because they had not accepted modern ways and were viewed as people who needed to be educated (Guan,

1991). For example, in 2007, Ma Ying-jeou, before elected as being President, said to indigenous people who questioned the relocation of their tribe in Taipei County, as the KMT had decided:

…3% of indigenous people [in Taipei County] are our [County’s] employees, [which means] your people have no problem…but you need more opportunities. You come to our [non-indigenous people’s] city, so you are citizens of Taipei [County]. I view you as human beings…I view you as citizens, I will educate you well, and will provide opportunities for you. I believe this is a correct way. So, I think you indigenous people should adjust your attitude as: I am here [Taipei], so I have to follow the game rules here. (quoted in Talkayuki, 2007)

The Payuan people in Daren were luckier than the Tao thanks to the anti- nuclear sentiment following the Fukushima crisis. Nevertheless, the Taiwanese government continues to face the dilemma of where to store its nuclear waste. Taiwan covers only 35,980 square kilometers (almost 14,000 square miles), has a semi-tropical climate, high population density, and high frequency of earthquakes. As such, it is difficult to find any location to safely store nuclear waste, including spent fuel, without creating risks to residents and the environment (The Legislative Yuan Official Gazette Department, 2013c: 372-380).

In Beck’s view, organized irresponsibility led to an inevitable clash of risk

198 cultures. In other words, distorted communication, in which people could not reach mutual understanding, was inevitable when dealing with nuclear risk.

6.4.3.3 The Clash of Risk Culture and Legitimation Crisis Following Beck, in this section I focus on the clash of risk cultures. First, it is important to realize that the social conflicts due to nuclear risk were not conflicts between capitalist and laboring classes as traditional Marxism recognizes. Most business leaders firmly support nuclear power before the Fukushima crisis. However, in the post- Fukushima era, many power elites, including a sub-contractor of the fourth nuclear project and vice director of the AEC, lost confidence in nuclear risk management (Lu, 2013).81Second, the influence of global nuclear risk, particularly in the aftermath of the Fukushima crisis, significantly contributed to the clash of risk cultures in Taiwan, not only because of the Japanese food scandal but also as a result of images published in Taiwan’s mass media and Internet of a high-tech society suffering from its own sophistication (Liu, 2013; Ho, 2014a; Ho, 2014b).

The aftermath of the Fukushima crisis deeply penetrated into Taiwan’s public discourse. Taiwan, as a former colony of Japan (1895-1945), has an ambivalent view of the country. Shortly after 1945, many Taiwanese people viewed Japan as a cruel ruler, but the experience of the KMT’s martial law domination caused many to reevaluate Japanese rule and come to view it was less onerous. Japan developed into an advanced cultural icon in Taiwan’s public discourse in the post-war era, especially in scientific and engineering circles (Kerr, 1992; Shackleton, 1998). Even though the KMT’s educational system attempted to challenge positive views about the Japanese, most Taiwanese regarded Japan as a comparatively modern authority. In fact, many Japanese cultural

81 The vice director of the AEC, Hsieh De-ji, resigned from the AEC in September 2011 (Lee, 2011).

199 products passed censorship during the martial law era because the KMT also viewed Japan as an important partner in the fight against Mao’s communist China, and the KMT encouraged many Japanese enterprises to establish branches in Taiwan during the 1960s and 1970s to stimulate the economy.82 Hence, Japanese culture retained some influence in Taiwan’s society after the WWII.

Because of their view of the Japanese, when more and more Taiwanese realized that even Japan had failed to deal with nuclear risk and failed to manage the aftermath of the Fukushima earthquake and tsunami, they were further convinced that Taipower and the Taiwanese government would definitely fail in their attempts at nuclear management. A 2013 poll showed that only 11% of the participants believed that Taipower and the government had the capacity to secure nuclear safety (Fang, 2013). According to Ho (2014a) and Ho et al. (2014), the Fukushima factor did cause an immense influence in the post-Fukushima era. Because of this kind of cultural affinity, the public perceived more nuclear risk after the Fukushima crisis—many information of post-Fukushima Japan were quickly spread in Taiwan’s media and public discourse (Liu, 2013; Ho, 2014b). A former energy official told me “…in Taiwan, the Japanese factor did cause an immense influence in the post-Fukushima era… the public perceived more nuclear risk after the Fukushima crisis”.

The Taiwanese government had previously claimed that the public perceived more nuclear risk than the actual scientific nuclear risk to which they were vulnerable. However, this argument lost its compellingness when the public saw the aftermath of the Fukushima accident in Japan, including vivid images of the relocation of residents and of

82 Another major foreign culture in Taiwan, of course, is American culture, which is symbolized as affluence, nobility, and modernity. In Taiwan, the pet phrase “I do not have that American time [to do something]” means the speaker has no leisure time to do something he feels is unimportant.

200 children having their thyroid glands checked for health risks (Yang and Lin, 2014; Yu, 2014). As Beck described, mega consequences, such as those present after the Fukushima accident, are a significant factor affecting risk society. Seeing the stark images on the Internet or other media, many Taiwanese public had to accept the fact that the modern state could not control and manage nuclear risk. When the KMT insisted on building the fourth of risk in the post-Fukushima era, President Ma (2008-2016) sought to restore the KMT’s quasi-authoritarian measures but it learned that its pro-nuclear stance would weigh negatively on its efforts to govern. The revival of the anti-nuclear movement in the post-Fukushima era thus can be viewed as civil society’s answer to the KMT’s distorted communication. Thanks to Ma, who also applied quasi-authoritarian measures on other public affairs, such as economic policies and land seizure without due process, the anti- nuclear movement quickly won sympathizers and allies from other social movements.

6.5 The Revival of Taiwan’s Anti-nuclear Movement

Hsiao (1987) may be the first scholar to identify that Taiwan had fallen into the condition Beck called ‘enforced cosmopolitanization’: “global risks activate and connect actors across borders, who otherwise do not want to have anything to do with one another” (Beck, 2006: 340). According to Hsiao, Taiwan’s newly born middle class quickly faced the dilemma of economic growth at environmental expense. This contradiction has continued and the anti-nuclear movement is the most visible expression of this contradiction.

“Taiwan’s citizens have just begun to enjoy the fruit of rapid economic growth; it may be hard for the newly born middle class to accept the idea that they have to sacrifice economic growth for environmental values. The Western middle class did not face the contradiction between economic growth and environment in the eraly era of industrilization” (Hsiao, 1987: 10).

201 The cosmopolitanization of the society quickly brought Taiwan into the age of global risk. Chou (2013) argued that Taiwan entered an era of Beck’s risk society, expressed in a series of mega accidents, from industrial, and medical to food problems which triggered a loss of public confidence in the government. Based on Beck’s recognition of the age of global risk, in the following section I analyze the recent revival of the anti-nuclear movement.

6.5.1 The ‘New’ Anti-nuclear Movement The revival of anti-nuclear sentiment in Taiwan is in the form a new social movement (NSM) as a result of a clash of risk cultures.83 As just discussed, the public lost belief in the culture of rational risk management in the post-Fukushima era. This change had little connection with the DPP or partisan politics, but instead is related to the rise of anti-nuclear discourse in the public sphere, especially through Internet communities. In this regard, the post-Fukushima anti-nuclear sentiment is organized not only around street protesters but as a result of being shocked by the scale of the Fukushima crisis and the desire to avoid nuclear risks in Taiwan.

This NSM in Taiwan coincides with the ecological protests outlined by Beck (1995), protests that did not arise due to the despoliation of nature, but because people found their specific cultural models of nature in danger, and cultural models that were being threatened by the very symbols of progress, such as cars, nuclear complexes, and factories. In this regard, the anti-nuclear movement is not an environmental movement per se, but a type of social movement which uses ‘nature’ itself as a subject. In this regard, the concept of underpinning Taiwan’s current public discourse focuses on the

83 According to Habermas, new social movements were triggered by distorted communication in the society (Habermas, 1981), and in Beck’s account, clashes of risk cultures are a kind of distorted communication due to mega-risks (Beck, 2006:339-340; Rosa, Renn, and McCright, 2014).

202 frequency of the earthquakes on the island which makes Taiwan especially vulnerable to a Fukushima-level nuclear accident (The Legislative Yuan Official Gazette Department,2013c: 56; Lin, 2014). In this discourse, risk is not a tradeoff but a real condition which cannot be controlled by human beings. In the new discourse, risk is re- framed life on an earthquake-prone island requires society to be responsible for not taking risks (Liu, 2012; Wu, 2013; Ho, 2014a, 2014b).

The new politics involving NSMs rely highly on grassroots activists rather than trade unions or political parties, which are viewed as another form of ‘authority for domination’ (Offe, 1985). Taiwan’s post-Fukushima anti-nuclear movement is led by young activists who cannot be categorized along traditional class or racial/political lines. Cultural and religious groups also participate in anti-nuclear activities in the years after the Fukushima crisis. Moreover, these groups rely on post-ideological motives— they refuse to cooperate with the existing power, whether it is KMT or DPP (Habermas, 1981;

Ho, 2014a, 2014b; Offe, 1985). In Taiwan, the restoration of the KMT’s quasi- authoritarian measures after 2000 and the handicapped DPP after 2008 created a situation in which civil groups could not turn to the DPP for support. In addition, the younger generation of anti-nuclear activists did not trust the DPP’s capability to block the fourth nuclear complex in the Legislative Yuan. As a result, the DPP was largely marginalized in the growing anti-nuclear movement (Ho, 2014a: 978-979).

Taiwanese NSMs have been unwilling to negotiate because they often consider their central concern to be of such a high and universal priority that no part of it could be sacrificed. The shock of the Fukushima crisis allowed the anti-nuclear groups to win the moral high ground. In this regard, the anti-nuclear movement easily justifies prioritizing an end to nuclear power over other issues— Taiwan could not afford any crisis of the Fukushima level. In fact, a famous slogan used by anti-nuclear activists in

203 the post-Fukushima era was ‘Do not let Taiwan become the next Fukushima’ (Liu, 2012; Wu, 2013).

In addition, the activists in NSMs are usually ‘decommodified’ in the sense that their status has not defined them in the labor market. Consequently, their time and budgets have become more flexible. In Taiwan, celebrities, middle class housewives, students, retired people, and unemployed youth all participate in recent anti-nuclear activity. In the 1980s and 1990s, the anti-nuclear movement was widely viewed as a movement for challenging the state legitimacy of the KMT. However, in post-Fukushima anti-nuclear protests, a Taiwan without nuclear power plants itself is the ultimate goal, and partisan politics draws little interest. Even though many DPP politicians have revived their anti-nuclear discourse and actions, DPP could not take much credit in the post- Fukushima era because of its inaction during the ‘lost decade’ of anti-nuclear. It is not seem as a reliable or trust worthy partner. Recently, the KMT accuses DPP of being opportunist because of DPP’s transformation from being inactive to active in anti-nuclear protests after the Fukushima crisis.

6.5.2 The New Anti-nuclear Movement: State Legitimacy Is Challenged by Civil Society in the Context of Global Risk Habermas and Beck both argued that commodification and bureaucratization have invaded the social space of everyday life, which was supposed to be the space of ‘subjects’ rather than ‘calculations’ (Habermas, 1987:113-198; Beck, 2009b). However, the globalization of capital flows and the related risks it has brought have particular impact on Taiwan. In this section, I examine the Taiwanese anti-nuclear movement between 2008 and 2014 from Beck’s cosmopolitan perspective (Beck, 2006).

According to Beck, in the age of globalization the power of business gradually replaces the power of the state. From this aspect, the ‘lost decade’ of Taiwan’s

204 anti-nuclear movement could be viewed as a victory of business power. On the one hand, Taiwan’s business leaders pushed the government to further deregulate business and investment in China; on the other, they argued that Taiwan would need more nuclear power (and the abundance of electricity it provided) to compete with China’s rising business power. Ironically, as real wages in Taiwan fell under increasing deregulation and globalization, nuclear proponents further justified nuclear power as a way to secure economic growth and respond to an increasingly recognized global risk: climate change.

In this regard, Taiwan’s business power created a duplicitous stance: it promotes the deregulations of capital flows and the use of nuclear power to protect Taiwan from the vagaries of the deregulated global economy. In the end, the business power wins profits from both prongs of its strategy, but the logic of the strategy is blatantly duplicitous.

Such a duplicitous strategy has long been forecasted to result in a global economy that abuses human rights, widens social inequity, and deepens environmental problems (Harvey, 2001; Beck, 2005, Habermas, 2015). In Taiwan, the land seizure policy has resulted in the contamination of farm lands, economic injustice, and rampant housing speculation (Hsu, 2017). In order to respond to these effects of the global movement of capital, nuclear power is justified by business power as a means to resolve economic and environmental problems despite the fact that nuclear power has its own risks and effects.

The 2008-2014 civil society revival, including the anti-nuclear movement, can be viewed as a response to the alliance of capital and state power. Starting with President Lee’s administration, business leaders built their hegemony in the public sphere. During Chen’s presidency (2000-2008), the DPP had established a better relationship with NGOs than had KMT and provided limited channels for NGOs to participate in policy-making. President Chen also introduced policies of deliberate

205 democracy that included public participation in a number of developmental plans (Chou, 2013). Even though NGOs were not entirely satisfied with the limited deliberate democracy provided by President Chen, the conflict between the civil society and business power was muted (Chen, 2006; Chou, 2014). However, with the pace of capital deregulation sped up under President Ma, and with the restoration of quasi-authoritarian measures, including the cancelling of participation of citizens in planning, conflicts between business and civil society became increasingly difficult to resolve under representative democracy. According to Huang and Ho (2015: 180) “Activists felt frustrated by [Chen’s] DPP and felt threatened by Ma’s KMT”.

The DPP was in chaos after 2008 and failed to win a majority in the Legislative Yuan until 2016. The Legislative Yuan effectively lost its ability to function as a branch of power during Ma’s presidency (2008-2016). The resurgence of social movements during Ma’s term thus needs to be understood as a form of resistance to the risk of restoring authoritarianism, to social inequity, environmental degradation and, in the end, to nuclear power. While the KMT still promotes the fourth nuclear power plant as a solution for reducing the side effects of globalization, the Fukushima crisis has catalyzed civil society to resist without compromise. After the Fukushima crisis, an increasing number of business leaders, such as the those representing the Fubon Financial

Group and Eva Air, voiced their opposition to the fourth nuclear complex (Ho, 2014a). The pro-nuclear KMT government found it increasingly difficult to mobilize business leaders than in the 1990s.

Currently, civil society is challenging state legitimacy in the context of global risk. Although anti-nuclear activists may not have intended to do so, their actions nevertheless contributed to the KMT’s legitimation crisis in 2014. The KMT failed to respond to the revival of civil society because the KMT still viewed social movements,

206 including the anti-nuclear movement, as controlled by DPP. The KMT did not understand that the context of global risk and the post-Fukushima era nurtured an updated anti- nuclear discourse, which integrated with other discourses, including green energy alternatives, protection of local businesses, labor rights, and the pursuit of deliberative democracy. When President Ma further promoted deregulation of financial flows and reduces environment protections in order to expand trading with China, some in civil society pointed to the strategy as a de fact to unification with China in economic terms.

Thus Ma caused the resurgence of social movements interest a keeping Taiwan independent of China. Anti-nuclear activists thus easily gained more support from other NGOs (Lin, 2013; Life Center, 2014).

When the KMT maintained its economic growth-oriented argument for justifying the fourth nuclear complex in the post-Fukushima era, the KMT looked awkward and irresponsible in the eyes of many. Furthermore, while the KMT had a low opinion of Internet communities, dismissing Internet opinions as propaganda or unprofessional comment of laypersons, Internet communities played a significant role in spreading anti-nuclear discourses,. The KMT thus overlooked a key tool used by the anti- nuclear communities and provoked Taiwan’s youth to question the legitimacy of state power.

Social movements are often triggered by emotions derived from some meaningful event which incite protesters to overcome their fear to turn to collective action for challenging power (Castells, 2012:219). In Taiwan, the Fukushima crisis served as this meaningful event. The rise of communication through the Internet, as the core of network society, spurred the new social movements. The Internet provided the large scale horizontal communication needed for organizing, deliberating, and mobilizing movements. Moreover, the Internet created “the culture of autonomy, the fundamental

207 cultural matrix of contemporary societies” (Castells, 2012: 230). Castells identified social networking sites as platforms for sharing cultures, hopes, outrages, and struggles. From this perspective, failing to respond to the public discourses on Internet platforms, including those from whistle blowers of the nuclear industry, further crippled the KMT’s legitimacy in the post-Fukushima era (Suei, 2016; Tao, 2016).

6.6 Which ‘Path’ Explains the Taiwan Case?

Acoording to the historical and empirical record in Chapters 3, 4, and 5, Path I (Figure 2-3) is not applicable to Taiwan’s case. In the 1980s and 1990s, the anti-nuclear movement emerged and strongly challenged state legitimacy, leading to the rise of the largest opposition party, the DPP, and civil society resistance, perhaps best characterized by the famous slogan ‘anti-nuclear is for anti-dictatorship’. Path III (Figure2-5) also does not explain the choice of nuclear power. In fact, the KMT government began construction of the first nuclear complex in 1971 before the oil crisis. Moreover, the government continued investment in nuclear power as a modernization strategy, not mainly as an energy stretagy. And, Path III cannot address Taiwan’s unique U.N. crisis as a driver for the choice of nuclear power.

In the post Fukushima era (2011-2014) civil society suscessfully challenged state legitimacy, leading to a crisis of state lefitimacy in 2014 as civil movements occupied government and halted its operations. Both political parties are now doubted as sources of political leadership and governments formed by them are regarded in civil society as threats to democratic governance. Only Path II (Figure 2-4) explains the post- Fukushima period. Moreover, only Path II can comprehensively apply to Taiwan’s case over time from 1971 to present.

208 Analyze how the public senses nuclear risk from Beck’s three perspectives Civil Society Risk

Analyze how civil Analyze how U.N. Crisis nuclear power is (1971~) society responds to operated and state legitimacy causes distortion in communication Analyze how the Government justifies nuclear power from 3 Oil Crisis components Legitimation Nuclear (1973~) Crisis Nuclear power is a key factor Power to secure state legitimacy through its support to major constructions, which are under faith of the ideology of progress. Also, the Government Challenge of wants to strengthen the the Direct impact relationship with the U.S. Globalizatio through nuclear business. n Indirect impact (1980s- Figure 6-2. Detailed analysis based on Path II inTaiwan’s case: State legitimacy is diminished or lost by the introduction of or continued reliance on nuclear power. The 1971 U.N. withdrawal of recognition crippled Taiwan, placing the country in a constant ‘exceptional situation’ (Beck, 2006a, 2006b, 2009a),84 in which the government had to convince the public that Taiwan could survive and even prosper.

Nuclear power was embedded in a 40-year strategy to convince the Taiwanese people that the state and the society are legitimate despite the U.N. decision. Nuclear power was used to justify a one-party state that could modernize Taiwan through ‘Major Constructions’. Most important, after Taiwan lost its official diplomatic relationship with the United States in 1979, fostering a business relationship through nuclear power became a practical strategy for securing among Taiwan’s people a sense of state

84 Beck means in risk society, states constantly face extreme situations in political, economic, and environmental aspects.

209 legitimacy. Nuclear power’s ability to not only signify Taiwan’s advanced state but to embody the ideology of endless economic growth became the focus of business and political elites. By 1985, three nuclear power complexes had been built (with a total of 6 plants and a nameplate capacity of 4927 MW) as part of the government’s developmental strategy. President Chiang Chin-kuo laid the groundwork for cultivating an ideology of progress in Taiwan’s public discourse and is remembered as a leader who created wealth for Taiwan.

But the appearance of legitimacy was short-lived. After the end of Taiwan Martial Law in 1987 and the rise of the environmental movement, the rallying cry of ‘anti-nuclear power is for anti-dictatorship’ became the most well-known political slogan in Taiwan. The newly established DPP challenged the corruption and technocracy in the nuclear industry. For civil society activists, pursing nuclear power itself violated the principle of energy democracy because Taiwan’s nuclear power was a product of the corrupt Taipower monopoly (an entity controlled by the government).

At this time, a second phase of the legitimation crisis occurred. Under Lee’s presidency (1988- 2000), the economic system became the main driving force for promoting nuclear power. Honoring the request from capitalists and technocrats for a better business climate enabled the KMT to claim itself as a rational, responsible authority and label the newly established DPP as irrational and anti-science.

In the wave of globalization and the rise of business power in the 1990s, the pro-nuclear lobby used increasing Taiwan’s economic competitiveness as additional justification for nuclear power. That is, nuclear power morphed from its cultural symbolism to its embodiment of the values of high-growth, state-facilitated capitalism. When the DPP challenged the state legitimacy of the R.O.C., the KMT used the DPP’s

210 anti-nuclear stance to portray the party’s politicians as a group of irrational, impractical opportunists. When President Chen (DPP) attempted to terminate the fourth nuclear complex in 2000, the contradiction between anti-nuclear politics and administrative power became apparent. This led to a growing alientation between civil society and the state.

President Chen believed that his stand on the fourth nuclear complex could win enough social support based on the many mistakes and procedural injustices concerning the fourth nuclear complex that had been unveiled (Ho, 2003; 2006). However, terminating construction without the permission of the Legislative Yuan or a national referendum made it difficult for President Chen to defend his decision. Although Chen later promised to hold a national referendum, this promise did not come to fruition during his presidency (2000-2008). DPP politicians withdrew from anti-nuclear politics during this period.

The so-called ‘lost decade’ (2001-2011) of the anti-nuclear movement ensued. The business and economic elites believed they had again eluded a legitimacy crisis. But the decade was also marked by the growth of Taiwan’s risk society (see Chapter 5). The power of business eclipsed the power of the state during this period. Both the DPP and President Ma, who took office in 2008, endorsed nuclear power. As a result, ‘distorted communication’ in the Habermasian sense on nuclear power grew during this period. Using Habermas’s theory, this lost decade can be viewed as a preparation stage for the rise of the next social movement and social conflict. During the ‘lost decade’, nuclear power was not only justified as a carbon reduction strategy, but also portrayed as a cheap energy source for Taiwan’s business sector, although the budget of the fourth nuclear complex (including 2 plants with a combined capacity of 2600 MW) grew to nearly $10 billon. President Ma focused on producing commodities for global market and

211 moving toward ‘reunification’ with mainland China as a legitimate strategy for securing Taiwan’s future. Thus, nuclear power was portrayed as a strategy of economic independence while its use was mainly to support economic growth in the global economy. However, nuclear power became a kind of ‘Giant Power’, supply side energy conventional paradigm, which focuses on techno-fixes for the market economy but fails to perceive the social and environmental requirements (Byrne and Toly, 2006: 9-12).

In this regard, President Ma again created a new contradiction between state legitimacy and nuclear power. First, for many of the Taiwanese public, losing state legitimacy to China was unacceptable, especially when more and more social problems emerged due to China-Taiwan trading under Ma’s rule. Most important of all, President Ma revived authoritarian measures to enforce his policies, including his nuclear policies. However, those same measures triggered the revival of civil society. NGOs and activists returned to the streets. From 2008 to 2011, social movements rallied against the risks from the country’s economic policies. In particular, NGOs could not stand the erosion of Taiwan’s democracy that resulted from Ma’s ‘One China Market’ proposal. According to Beck, civil society’s resistance can be viewed as the resistance to local and global risks which accompany the deregulation of capital flows between countries (Beck, 2005, 2006a, 2006b). In the case of Taiwan, civil society expressed concern about the increasing movement of Taiwanese businesses and capital from Taiwan to mainland China, eroding the power of Taiwan in the global marketplace.

The Fukushima crisis became the spark that ignited the revival of the anti- nuclear movement. This time, Taiwanese people directly witnessed and were shocked by the aftermath of nuclear power through the mass media. The KMT had an extremely difficult time justifying nuclear power in the post-Fukushima era. However, the party could not reverse its position, as it had worked to establish ‘anti-nuclear’ as an irrational

212 idea manipulated by the DPP. Instead, President Ma attempted to foster more business with China to save the KMT’s legitimacy, which further disturbed civil society. It was not a coincidence that many types of NGOs and cultural groups rallied together to challenge the KMT in the 2014 Sunflower Movement. The KMT’s defeat in the 2016 elections may be viewed as an important victory of social power over the power of the state and businesses. When Tsai Ing-wen from the DPP took over as President in May 2016, the public believed that Taiwan would finally be safe from nuclear risk. President

Tsai promised to phase out all nuclear power by 2025. However, a few months later, the public realized that a new nuclear risk was approaching Taiwan.

Food imports from the Japanese prefectures of Fukushima, Ibaraki, Tochigi, Gunma, and Chiba had been suspended on March 25, 2011, due to fears that the areas might be contaminated from the meltdown at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power complex. Since 2015, the Taiwanese government has required companies importing

Japanese food products to present certificates of origin to prove that the items did not come from the five prefectures. Radiation inspection certificates also have been required for imports of items such as tea, baby food, dairy, and aquatic products.

On November 15, 2016, the DPP government affirmed its plan to lift the ban on Japanese food products from five radiation-affected prefectures, stating that deregulation will be carried out scientifically and gradually, while confirming that additional public hearings would be planned. The DPP’s proposal immediately triggered an attack from environmental groups and the KMT. Ironically, the DPP was the party who ealier had questioned the safety of Japanese foods. Now the roles reversed. The DPP relied on the AEC, an institution the party criticized for years, to guarantee the safety of Japanese foods. In contrast, the KMT began to question the capacity of an agency it had endorsed for decades.

213 There is speculation that DPP was attempting to foster more business opportunities with Japan. Importing potential nuclear foods could be a part of this strategy, although the DPP government denies it (Chang, Lo, & Lin, 2016). Another speculation is that DPP may foresee the possible loss from the Chinese market as Taiwan’s punishment if the DPP refuses to accept the ‘One China’ principle. Thus, for the DPP, reducing economic reliance on China is necessary to secure Taiwan’s state legitimacy. Again, Taiwan faces a contradiction between state legitimacy and nuclear risk. For supporters of Taiwan’s state legitimacy, reducing economic reliance on China is vital for securing Taiwan’s security, and thus the risk from potentially irradiated foods could be seen as acceptable. Needless to say, supporters of food imports from the five Japanese prefectures have used rational calculations and probabilities to justify the safety of consuming foods from the prefectures (Hsu, 2016).

On the other hand, anti-nuclear activists have maintained their arguments on global risks and cast them in a language of resistance to environmental injustice. There are several examples of injustice resulting from Taiwan’s nuclear policies. For instance, the DPP, in order to protect Taiwan from the threat of China, could be willing to accept a certain level of risk by importing potentially radioactive food from Japan (and the Japanese might be willing to take advantage of Taiwan’s political insecurity for their own gain). Similarly, many Taiwanese believed that the indigenous Tao people on Orchid Island ‘deserved’ the nuclear waste storage facility because they had not modernized

(Guan, 1991). These actions were officially ‘justified’ under the argument that exposure to irradiated food or waste is not likely to cause harm. Just as KMT guaranteed the safety of the Tao people and residents of Ming-sheng Mansion, the Japanese government tried to guarantee the safety of foods from areas that may have been exposed to nuclear radiation. Moreover, it was reported that the Taiwanese DPP government does not have the capacity to inspect Japanese foods properly under the current regulation (Liu, 2016).

214 Thus, the DPP government’s guarantee of safety of nuclear foods after lifting the ban is questionable. Under social pressure, the DPP held a public hearing on December 25, 2016. However, protestors shut down the public hearing. Ironically, this time, not only the KMT, but also Chang An-le’s Unification Party mobilized their members to question the DPP’s procedural approach (Chou, Ho, & Huang, 2016).

A vicious cycle has persisted in Taiwan’s society. A Taiwanese novelist, Wu

Cho-liu, famously stated that Taiwan is the Orphan of Asia (Wu, 2006). Wu meant that Taiwan’s unsettled state legitimacy created anxiety in the society after WWII. As Chi Pang-yuan, the editor of the English translation of Wu’s novel, writes, “During the second half of the twentieth century, Taiwan developed into a democratic reality, looking forward to international understanding of our efforts” (quoted in Cole: 7, 2017). That effort has been heavily based on Taiwan’s use of nuclear power in its rapid industrialization and nuclear research. But the side effects of nuclear power and its risk have caused civil society to challenge the claim of state legitimacy, which regarded nuclear power as a solution to respond to these challenges, forming a vicious cycle.

The relationship between Taiwan’s state legitimacy and nuclear risk is illustrated in Figure 6-3. In Taiwan, threats to state legitimacy triggered the pursuit for nuclear power, while unmanageable nuclear risk in turn provokes an additional legitimation crisis such as the DPP proposal to purchase argricultural products from contaminated lands near the Fukushima power complex. These threats brought about a new era of civil society resistance. In order to rid the country of this vicious cycle, public discourse needs to be understood as a means to resituate the debate from state legitimacy to rising civil society legitimacy. In this respect, legitimacy increasingly appears to be regarded as a property of civil society, not the state.

215 This chapter has offered detailed evidence that Tanwanese civil society has resisted nuclear power as a supposed means to promote state legitimacy over time. Sometimes the development of nuclear power was postponed, and in the post-Fukushima era, Taiwan’s civil society has won what appears to be a substantial victory over state- backed nuclear power strategy, as proposals for a ‘no nuclear’ Taiwan here surfaced (see below).

Legitimation Crisis

Nuclear Nuclear

Risk Power

Figure 6-3 The vicious cycle of the legitimation crisis and the role of nuclear power in Taiwan.

6.7 Conclusion: Recovering Public Discourses for a ‘No Nuclear’ Taiwan?

For Habermas, only through public discourses without coercion of money and power can we cultivate a society with a real democracy. Conversely, a better democracy can create better conditions for public discourses. Even though the government and Taipower have maintained technocracy in nuclear policies after the martial law era, the government could not stop anti-nuclear discouses in society. These public discourses can be viewed as seeds. The Fukushima crisis and internet social media

216 can be viewed as catalysts which triggered the growth of these seeds of democracy. People never know how many ‘democracy seeds’ will survive under technocracy. But ethically, if human beings desire real freedom (see Chapter 2), public discourses are meaniningful seeds for a desirable future, a legitimate civil society. In Taiwan’s case, public discourses usually arose as tools to change national politics in the 1980s and 1990s. The focus was mainly on influencing the KMT and DPP. While in the post- Fukushima era (2011-present), with the help of the Internet and social media, public discourses more directly aim at civil society, causing local groups to form opposition by expressing local and global concerns and skepticism about the intentions of both political parties. The objective of these discourses appears to have been to embed legitimacy in civil society, not to restore legitimacy to the state. At least in the case of Taiwan, the crisis of state legitimacy may not be reversible and it may be a mistake to try to interpret civil society as motived by a goal of ‘curing’ the state legitimacy problem.

The rise of the environmental movement and the democracy movement in the 1980s made resistance to nuclear power a powerful means for attacking the dictatorship and technocracy of the Taiwan state. By 2000, the anti-nuclear movement was widely viewed as an anti-dictatorship movement. Nuclear power thus could be viewed as the contradiction between state legitimacy and civil rights. The lost decade (2001-2011) of the anti-nuclear movement reflects Habermas’ ‘colonization of the lifeworld’ that comes from distorted communication. With the norms of money (deregulation of capital flows, economic growth) and administrative power, backed up by the aura of technocracy, the discourse on how nuclear power threatened civil rights became ‘invisible’ and ‘muted’ in the public sphere.

The Fukushima crisis, however, triggered the revival of Taiwan’s anti- nuclear movement which coincided with the revival of social movements that were

217 against the further deregulation of capital flows. Anti-nuclear activists, especially the youth, updated their argument to include global risk. They recognized the nuclear power issue had to be treated as a part of a green energy transition to face global risk and achieve a more desirable future for Taiwan.

The state’s legitimation crisis in 2014 was a turning point for the anti-nuclear movement and a milestone of the resurgence of civil society, in which a more democratic energy pathway is demanded. The conflicts regarding Taiwan’s energy future are still the conflicts between civil society and state and business power. The success of designing a green energy pathway without nuclear power for Taiwan’s future hinges on whether the public discourse can be built upon its power as a civil movement not beholden to either political party. Can it rally wide sections of society to move beyond the confines of KMT-DPP conflicts and center resistance on the rejection of risk society, and center its goals on the adoption of a new idea of Taiwan’s future? Under a green and democratic energy structure, can Taiwan rid itself of the vicious cycle between nuclear power and state legitimacy?

218 Chapter 7

CONCLUSION

Technique has penetrated the deepest recesses of the human being. The machine tends not only to create a new human environment, but also to modify man's very essence. The milieu in which he lives is no longer his. He must adapt himself, as though the world were new, to a universe for which he was not created. He was made to go six kilometers an hour, and he goes a thousand. He was made to eat when he was hungry and to sleep when he was sleepy; instead, he obeys a clock. He was made to have contact with living things, and he lives in a world of stone. He was created with a certain essential unity, and he is fragmented by all the forces of the modern world.

Jacques Ellul (1964: 325)

In previous chapters, I demonstrated technocracy and risks of nuclear power have and are likely to continue to cause an ongoing legitimation crisis in Taiwan, in which people suffer injustice and risks from the coercion of money and power. Seen in this light, nuclear power threatens people’s freedom and well-being, and is a cause, rather than a cure, for civil society doubts about the legitimacy of the technocratic state.

The DPP government has proposed to make the country free of nuclear power by 2025 (CNA, 2016), but two vital questions remain. First, can the DPP realize its promise to phase out all nuclear power and ensure that 20% of the country’s energy is generated by renewables by 2025 (CNA, 2016)? Second, can Taiwan successfully abandon the existing vicious cycle of state legitimacy and nuclear risk through the DPP’s proposal? In the next section I present a discussion based on the recent energy discourse in Taiwan. I also present the Sustainable Energy Utility (SEU) concept developed in the United States as a possible alternative institution to facilitate the construction of a new energy future. Neither the energy discourse nor the SEU are offered as solutions. Instead, they are steps in a journey from Taiwan’s country unworkable condition as the ‘Orphan of Asia’.

219

7.1 An Energy Paradigm Shift toward ‘2025 No Nuclear Homeland’? 7.1.1 The Amendment of the Electricity Act In January 2017, the DPP-controlled Legislative Yuan passed an amendment to the Electricity Act that aims to promote renewable energy, terminate nuclear power, and liberalize the electricity sector (Chen, 2017). This recent electricity reform in Taiwan is focused primarily on supply and not demand (Chou et al., 2017). However, demand side participation is particularly important in energy policy if the public is expected to contribute to the green energy transition by changing their lifestyles. Energy democracy also relies heavily on demand side activities.

The 1992 U.S. Energy Policy Act established the basis for utility investment in demand side management and energy efficiency technologies. The U.S. Energy Policy Act of 2005, the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, and other key orders issued by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) further recognized the economic benefits of demand side participation and its importance for improving the competitiveness of wholesale electricity markets (Yang, 2017). In the EU, the value of demand side initiatives has been reflected in the European Network Codes, Energy Efficiency Directive, and other energy consumption provisions (Yang, 2017).

The recent Taiwan’s amendment to Electricity Act signals a possible path like those taken in the United States and the EU. But the transition in Taiwan’s case provides no incentives for renewable energy, energy conservation, or energy efficiency. Instead, the DPP plans to use carbon taxes to facilitate carbon reductions. Before the amendment was finalized, some NGOs argued that carbon taxes should be implemented before the Electricity Act is revised, otherwise renewable energy could lose its advantage in the market without carbon taxes. NGOs also argued that the external costs of

220 conventional energy should be considered in the Electricity Act, but the DPP did not follow this suggestion (Chou et al., 2017: 6-7).

In 2013, Taiwan contributed 1% of the world’s carbon emissions, and 53% of these emissions came from the electricity sector (Chou et al., 2017). According to the DPP’s proposal, Taiwan’s 2025 electricity mix will consist of natural gas (50%), coal (30%), and renewable energy (20%) (Chou et al., 2017). In the short term, only renewable energy suppliers can directly sell electricity to users; natural gas and coal suppliers will have to sell their electricity to the new sub-Taipower transmission company (Chou et al., 2017). In eight years, Taipower will be divided into two sub-companies that will handle power generation and transmission separately. However, NGOs argue that subdividing Taipower this way will be meaningless, since those two sub-companies will still be controlled by Taipower (Chou et al., 2017).

Many policy makers view demand-side flexibility as a critical enabler of efficient supply, consumer empowerment, and integration of renewable energy sources. Furthermore, demand response can be a part of new business models and can help promote innovative technologies and businesses, consulting services, the installation of smart meters, and home energy management applications. Taiwan’s industrial demand for electricity currently accounts for more than 50% of the country’s energy use (Bureau of Energy, 2016), compared with 29% in the UK and 26% in the United States. This fact reminds people of the large opportunity for demand-side management to reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions from the industrial sector.

Finally, NGOs argued that decentralization and local participation did not receive enough support in the recent revision of the Electricity Act (Chou et al., 2017). For example, the Act did not include a net metering policy or subsidies to help local

221 communities install energy-efficiency devices or renewable energy systems. Moreover, small businesses were excluded from selling electricity. In the next decades, more revisions may be required to achieve the DPP’s energy goals while improving energy democracy and justice. Overall, a solid green energy model would be needed for Taiwan’s energy transition. In the next section, I introduce the Sustainable Energy Utility (SEU) as one suggestion of a new green energy system paradigm to overcome the contradiction of nuclear power and state legitimacy. I do not mean to suggest that the

SEU is the only model for a green economy, or that its introduction is sufficient to launch a green economy. My interest in the SEU model is more focused and immediate. How can civil society undertake immediate actions to challenge the power of the exsiting monopoly in Taiwan’s utility sector? Because the SEU model proposes community actions to withdraw support for the prevailing utility sector by redirecting its payments to conservation, renewable energy and other options not owned by Taipower, the model is worth considering. Its proposal for communities to enter directly into the governing of energy by pursuing local policies, plans, and strategies is a further reason why it is worth Taiwan civil society’s consideration.

7.1.2 Rethinking the Energy Paradigm for Taiwan’s Future: Overcoming the Contradiction between State Legitimacy and Nuclear Power “Three hundred years of industrialization have rendered social and ecological relations largely commodity-based” (Byrne, Glover, and Martinez, 2002). Human existence now centers on the production and consumption of commodities, a state of affairs that has caused many unanticipated and unmanageable impacts. According to Taminiau, Wang, and Byrne (2014), green energy not only represents a movement for technical change, it could also signals the beginning of a paradigm shift across five spheres: ecology, society, economy, technology, and policy. In Taiwan, the conventional energy system is vulnerable to corruption and dominated by technocrats and companies

222 like Taipower. Conventional energy sources, commoditized in the global economy, have also experienced price volatility over time (Byrne and Toly, 2006; Taminiau, Wang, and Byrne, 2014: 352). This volatility results in additional social, ecological, and economic costs for Taiwan.

In this regard, the green energy economy proposes to nourish greater social security because it relies on domestic and clean energy sources, such as solar, wind, and geothermal. In particular, Taiwan, which imports 98% of its energy resources, including uranium, is in an insecure situation because of potential supply disruptions on the part of China or other countries. In addition, globalization has affected Taiwan’s local businesses and wages for decades. Reviving local business and employment through a green energy economy could stimulate Taiwan’s economy and reduce its social problems. However, conventional energy supporters often question the green energy economy in the following ways (Byrne and Taminiau, 2016: 140):

(1) Sustainable energy programs essentially represent a financial loss that requires conventional utility cost recovery mechanisms to offset decreased utility revenues and the cost of ‘stranded assets’.

(2) Successful energy efficiency programs decrease conventional utility financial returns, thereby increasing the long-term cost of capital to owners of the existing energy infrastructure.

(3) Unless integrated on the terms and conditions of profitability of current energy companies, renewable energy development threatens the viability of the energy sector.

(4) Integrating onsite renewable energy generation and microgrids into the existing energy sector is expensive and contradicts the architectural logic of modern utility systems.

In Taiwan, conventional energy supporters often use these arguments to strike down new policy approaches (Sunyunsuan Foundation, 2000; Chen and Nuclear

223 Myth Busters, 2014). In the current political economy, conventional utilities exert considerable influence over policymakers, which might explain why Taipower retains its monopoly under the new Electricity Act. It could also explain why the Act did not address energy service utilities or energy efficiency.

The lessons of the United States can be applied to Taiwan’s green energy transition. According to Byrne and Taminiau (2016), energy service utilities can carve out markets for efficiency without shifting the existing energy paradigm. Specifically, the conventional utilities can anticipate parallel operations without a clear path for replacing conventional economic growth-oriented development with a commons alternative. The recent history of renewable energy development also suggests that energy abundance and technical and economic optimality have often trumped sustainability (Byrne and Taminiau, 2016). In Taiwan’s situation, the DPP’s ‘2025 no nuclear homeland’ proposal also relies on large, centralized conventional and renewable energy technologies, such as coal plants and wind farms. In this regard, the new Electricity Act does not aim to construct a new energy paradigm but rather maintains the conventional ‘hard path’ of energy development (Byrne, Toly, & Glover, 2006; Lovins, 1977). A model capable of accelerating the formation of a new energy paradigm is required.

Developed as a new paradigm of energy economy that redefines the relations among society, environment, and technology, a Sustainable Energy Utility (SEU) was first proposed in Delaware in 2007 (Byrne and Taminiau, 2016). An SEU aims to balance social and market forces to realize a fundamental energy transition. Unlike the supply- side approach of conventional energy utilities, the SEU offers an approach to deliver on- site energy services. An SEU serves as a central clearinghouse for comprehensive programs such as efficiency, conservation, renewable energy, materials, water, and energy. The monetization of validated future energy savings lowers capital risk and is

224 used to attract investment. The resulting ‘community utility’ leverages community-shared future savings to cover the initial high costs of creating new energy infrastructures.

One of the key innovations of the SEU model is its capitalization strategy. The authority to deploy self-financing strategies, especially revenue-generating sustainable energy bonds, directs private investment capital towards public ends, unlike conventional energy economics where public benefit funds rely on utilities’ financial gains. This pathway to sustainable energy financing allows for infrastructure-level investment as the first step towards long-term capitalization of green energy development. A prominent feature is the use of appropriation-backed bonds and revenue bonds that are backed by a government’s taxing authority, the public sector’s appropriation process is employed to produce a stable and low-risk investment environment (Byrne and Taminiau, 2016).

Unlike metrics for conventional energy efficiency and on-site generation projects which measure performance in kWh or therms, the SEU deploys guaranteed energy savings contracts that outline contractually obligated monetary savings, further improving debt repayment assurance. The first of its kind in the United States, the statewide tax-exempt bond issued in 2011 by the Delaware SEU attracted $72.5 million of investment from bond investors, including pension funds (Byrne and Taminiau, 2016). The bond issue included contractual guarantees of $148 million in savings which must cut energy use in participating buildings by more than 25% in 20 years.

A SEU-based strategy, as such, operates energy efficiency programs that can be conceived as in competition with conventional utility operation – in other words, the SEU option could envision a path that moves beyond the conventional utility (Taminiau et al., 2017). In this way, the SEU provides a conceptual and practical vision of a

225 paradigm shift and, as a concept and model, can be clearly distinguished from what Byrne & Taminiau (2016:143) call the energy service utility (ESU) model.

According to Byrne, Martinez, and Ruggero (2009: 88), “regimes develop through the interplay of technology and society over time, rather than through prescribed programs. They alter history and then seek to prevent its change, except in ways that bolster regime power”. As discussed in previous Chapters, ‘the Tsing Hua nuclear clan’ and Taipower in Taiwan used its influence to insist on the nuclear hard pathway. However, in Taiwan’s case, it is important to note that Taipower will likely not simply cede political and economic success to an antithetical institution such as the SEU. That is one reason why energy reform is so challenging. One way to consider the conundrum is to position the current DPP proposal as part of a conventional energy paradigm where citizen action is restricted to a form of ‘consumer democracy’ (Byrne and Taminiau, 2016: 137). Under this so-called “optimality” paradigm, future energy development and its ecological footprint are to be decided by a ‘governance by capital’ approach where citizens exercise control as end-use consumers of energy (Byrne and Taminiau, 2016: 137-138). With such restrictions on control and input, the “optimality” paradigm largely relies on technological advancements and economic growth in order to present feasible and environmentally-friendly options for consumers to choose from.

New models are available that seek to tackle this inter-relationship. One example addressed here is the SEU. At its core, the SEU redefines energy–ecology- society relations as phenomena of a commons governance regime where citizens operate in a kind of “energy democracy” (Byrne and Taminiau, 2016:139-140). The SEU, as such, aligns governance by community standards and preferences rather than based on technocratic institutions and technical capability. Shared use of – and collective responsibility for – the environmental commons redefines politics and power. A

226 particular feature of the SEU model is the realization that efforts to drive sustainability can derive economic savings at a scale sufficient to cover initial investment and capital costs. In other words, the savings derived from energy and material efficiency and on-site renewable energy efforts can, when pooled together under a commons governance approach, be seen as the means to capitalize the public benefit of the new approach (Byrne and Taminiau, 2016: 140). As a self-financing pathway (i.e. delivering more in savings than the original investment cost), the SEU option provides for the prioritization of sustainable energy measures that would typically be neglected under the conventional energy paradigm. This realization represents a significant opportunity: as Byrne & Taminiau (2016: 140) note, for instance, worldwide self-funding conservation potential is estimated at $30 trillion.

The SEU governance approach is consistent with two critical elements of civil society (Byrne, Martinez, and Ruggero, 2009: 89-91). First, decisions are based on streams of common benefits for the community; secondly, the SEU emphasizes the social governance of energy where the realization of the community’s interests and priorities are placed as key objectives of (energy) development. In Taiwan’s case, implementation of SEU-style governance could challenge Taipower’s monopoly of the energy market. In particular, citizens’ combined efforts to secure commonwealth commitments and objectives would likely advance an interplay of the institution, the individual and groups around energy problems and how to match social needs and renewable energy availability. In other words, under the SEU model, citizens could have a better chance to debate and influence energy policies and decision-making. Such a conceptualization aligns with the Habermasian ‘ideal speech situation’ as opposed to current energy decision-making dynamics under the “obese” energy regime which “governs without trust, committing society to a treadmill of more to overcome conflict” (Byrne, Martinez, and Ruggero, 2009: 89).

227 In this regard, an energy paradigm that includes the pursuit of an SEU could not only help reduce nuclear risk in Taiwan, but also provide better energy democracy opportunities and realization of other goals for civil society (Byrne and Toly, 2006). State legitimacy, currently realized through ‘distorted communication’ under “consumer democracy” (Taminiau and Byrne, 2016) dynamics where Taipower and the government’s technocratic order are key decision-makers, is challenged by implementing the SEU’s community governance model. In this approach, Taiwan’s citizens would have the chance to relocate energy-ecology-society relations in a social common (Byrne, Martinez, and Ruggero, 2009: 91) enabling citizens to replace the current system’s single-minded pursuit of wealth with strateries that harness community action and resources to pursue energy democracy. Guha (2003) has defined democracy as collective decision making based on public values to support public infrastructure. Moreover, from the persepective of the circular economy (Ghisellini, Cialani, and Ulgiati, 2016), an SEU could reduce the reliance on the raw materials compared to the conventional commodity- based economy which relies on a centralized energy paradigm and treats conservation as “expensive” (Taminiau and Byrne, 2016).

Successful versions of the SEU model have demonstrated that an emerging energy economy paradigm can work to support a green energy transition. Recently, the model was featured in the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) review of sustainable energy development models (IEA, 2016). Seoul’s successful project ‘One Less Nuclear

Power Plant’ also shares SEU concepts (Byrne et al., 2015; Lee, 2015). Citizens as ‘prosumers’ through a strategic and collective application of the solar city concept. The urban fabric is transformed to become a power plant itself (Mayor of Seoul Metropolitan Government, 2014; Byrne, et al., 2015; Taminiau, Seo, and Lee, 2015).

228 For Taiwan, the SEU can be a practice embedded in ongoing energy transition policies, because it redirects social spending and financing rather than requiring an increase in investment per se. This policy is important because Taiwan’s financial burden from national debt has increased to its historically highest (Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics, 2017). In 2015, each Taiwanese person bore $7,300 of debt while average personal income is $22,384 (Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics, 2017). Therefore, under the conventional energy paradigm which relies on centralized energy producers, the society will deepen its debt. A possible side effect is that Taiwan’s political leaders might use the financial crisis to propose reopening of nuclear complex projects. This means that Taiwan might be trapped again in a vicious ‘state legitimacy- nuclear power cycle’ (see Figure 6-3). 85

The SEU model is a new paradigm in which communities, small businesses, and the environment can all be improved together by spending less on energy development. In this regard, the SEU concept may be useful for further revising the current Electricity Act, which did not provide a vision for improving energy democracy, energy conservation, or supporting local communities and businesses. The SEU provides a chance to begin breaking the vicious nuclear risk–legitimation crisis cycle by reducing the technocracy that Taipower and the government currently manage. Distortion in communication due to power, money, and nuclear risk can be avoided for a legitimate civil society. As an extension of this dissertation, building an SEU-based analytical framework for analyzing Taiwan’s ‘energy paradigm and legitimacy relationship’ may shed more light on the discourse surrounding Taiwan’s ongoing energy transition.

85 In 2016, an official of the Ministry of Economic Affairs said that it would be possible to reopen the fourth nuclear complex project in the future (Yang, 2016).

229 Combining ideas of a circular economy, the SEU, globalization critique, and anti-hegemonic politics may offer the ingredients for a spreading public discourse that can actually realize a ‘no nuclear’ future.

230

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