Politics, Not Engineering, Is Keeping Taiwan's Nuclear 4 Shut

Taiwan's President Lai Ching-te (賴清德) has confirmed plans to restart two of the island's shuttered nuclear plants — but conspicuously missing from that agenda is Nuclear Power Plant 4, the newest and most capable facility in Taiwan's nuclear portfolio, leaving critics to ask why the government is reviving its nuclear program selectively, and at what cost.

The question took on fresh urgency in July, when 11 of Taiwan's most prominent business leaders gathered privately with President Lai at the presidential residence to discuss a looming trifecta of shortages: power, water, and skilled labor. The backdrop was the island's AI-driven industrial boom, which has pushed electricity demand to new highs and forced a fundamental rethink of energy policies Taiwan has pursued for the past decade.

Lai told the executives that Nuclear Power Plant 3, located in southern Taiwan, would come back online by the end of 2027, with Nuclear Power Plant 2 following by 2028. Once both plants are running again, nuclear power is expected to account for roughly 10% of Taiwan's electricity supply — a significant reversal for a government whose party once championed a "nuclear-free homeland."

What makes the omission of Nuclear 4 puzzling is that, by almost every technical measure, it is the superior candidate for restart. Located in Gongliao, New Taipei City — in northern Taiwan, where power shortages are most acute — the plant can generate 20 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity per year, compared with 15 billion for Nuclear Plants 2 and 3 combined, and 10 billion for the older Nuclear Plant 1.

The technology is also newer. Nuclear Plants 2 and 3 use Generation 2 reactor designs, while Nuclear 4 employs Generation 3 technology, which incorporates improved safety features and higher seismic-resistance standards. Perhaps most significantly, Nuclear 4's site was originally designed to accommodate up to six reactor units; only two have been built. If demand were to keep climbing, the plant could theoretically double or triple its output without requiring a new site.

Restarting Nuclear 4 would also relieve strain on Taiwan's transmission grid. Nuclear Plant 3, which the government has prioritized, sits in the relatively power-rich south, meaning its restart does relatively little to address shortfalls where demand is most concentrated. Nuclear 4 is located exactly where the power is needed most.

The political roots of the Democratic Progressive Party's resistance to Nuclear 4 run deeper than a simple policy preference. The DPP's anti-nuclear identity was forged by former party chairman Lin Yi-hsiung (林義雄), whose hunger strike and sustained activism in the early 2000s made opposition to Nuclear 4's construction — specifically — the moral centerpiece of the party's environmental platform. After Japan's Fukushima disaster in March 2011, that opposition widened to encompass all nuclear power in Taiwan.

The DPP spent a decade methodically dismantling Taiwan's nuclear capacity. In May 2025, the final operating reactor went offline, fulfilling the party's long-promised goal of a nuclear-free Taiwan. Less than a year later, the Lai administration began quietly reversing course — citing rising power demand and the imperative of keeping the island's technology sector competitive. Nuclear Plants 2 and 3 are back on the agenda. Nuclear 4 is not.

The most plausible explanation is not technical but political. Restarting Nuclear 4 would be widely read as a repudiation of Lin Yi-hsiung and the generation of DPP activists whose cause was specifically the termination of that plant. For the Lai administration, that political cost appears to outweigh the practical benefits — and so opposition to Nuclear 4 has quietly become a line the government will not cross.

The government has offered a series of formal justifications for leaving Nuclear 4 out: the plant has not cleared safety reviews, its original equipment manufacturer no longer produces the required components, unresolved geological concerns linger over the site, and the construction license has lapsed.

These objections are weaker than they appear. Safety reviews can be strengthened and resubmitted; a lapsed construction license is an administrative obstacle, not a permanent barrier. The parts-availability argument is especially unconvincing: Nuclear Plant 2, which uses older technology, has operated for decades and sourced components throughout its service life. If Nuclear 2 can find parts, it is difficult to see why Nuclear 4 — built with newer, more widely-used technology — cannot.

Nuclear 4's Unit 1 reactor was 95.6% complete before construction was suspended; Unit 2 stood at 91%. The bulk of the investment has already been made. The question is whether the government is willing to finish what was started.

If Taipei has in fact concluded that Nuclear 4 cannot be restarted, there is a substantial financial consequence it has yet to address. Under standard accounting rules, a plant deemed unrestorable must be written off entirely. For state-owned Taiwan Power Company, which carries Nuclear 4 on its balance sheet, that write-off would open an immediate NT$300 billion — roughly US$9 billion — hole in its financial statements.

The Lai administration's silence on Nuclear 4 is not a neutral stance. It is a choice that carries compounding costs: lost generating capacity at a moment of acute demand, mounting fiscal exposure for Taipower, and a credibility gap in an energy policy that is visibly being shaped around political sensitivities rather than the island's actual needs. The question of who bears responsibility for the trillion-dollar price tag of a decade of misguided nuclear policy remains, for now, unanswered.

​Original Article in Chinese

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