Taiwan is voting to restart a nuclear power plant – what’s at stake?

At the end of August, Taiwanese citizens will vote on restarting a recently shut down nuclear power plant. Votes on nuclear energy are always about long-term decisions and long-term risk assessment – in Taiwan, they’re also about the threat from China. In May, Taiwan shut down its last nuclear power plant reactor, thus achieving the goal announced in 2016 by the governing centre-left Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) – a “nuclear-free homeland” by 2025. On August 23, however, the Taiwanese will vote in a referendum on restarting the Maanshan-2 nuclear plant. How did it come to this? “Throughout Taiwan’s history, nuclear energy has always been an important issue – as well as the focus of referendums,” says Simona Grano, head of the University of Zurich’s China-Taiwan Relations research unit. The issue also has a history of being linked to political agendas. A referendum as a ‘direct-democracy counteroffensive’ In this case, the referendum is tied to a recent mass recall vote – an ...