Taiwan’s government is “very open” to expanding its nuclear power capability to meet growing demand from electricity-hungry chipmakers, according to the leader of the island’s administration Cho Jung-tai.
“As long as there is a consensus within Taiwan on nuclear safety and a good direction and guarantees for handling nuclear waste, with this strong consensus, we can have a public discussion,” Cho told Bloomberg.
“We hope that Taiwan can also catch up with global trends and new nuclear technologies,” he added, indicating a possible shift in policy around nuclear power – which fell from favour on the island after Japan’s Fukushima nuclear crisis in 2011.
[See more: Google is going to use small nuclear reactors to power AI data centres]
One of the two reactors at Taiwan’s last operational nuclear power plant, Maanshan 1, was shut down in July in preparation for the plant’s scheduled decommissioning next year. The remaining reactor is set to close in May 2025, a move intended to make Taiwan nuclear free.
But pushback on nuclear power is getting harder to maintain, reports Bloomberg, due to the global boom in artificial intelligence (AI), which is pressuring Taiwan’s chipmakers to ramp up production. Taiwan is a world leader in advanced semiconductor manufacturing and a key supplier for US firms like Apple and Nvidia. The industry, an important pillar of Taiwan’s economy, requires huge amounts of electricity.
Other places around the world are also looking to nuclear to boost their tech industries. In the US, Google has struck a deal to use small nuclear reactors to power its data centres, while Microsoft is helping bring the disused Three Mile Island plant back into operation in Pennsylvania. South Korea and the Philippines have meanwhile agreed to conduct a feasibility study into reviving the latter’s stalled Bataan Nuclear Power Plant.
