2026

The DPP isn't the biggest fan of nuclear power. One of the major campaign promises of the DPP under Tsai Ing-wen was the elimination of nuclear power in Taiwan by 2025. Unfortunately, the people of Taiwan had different ideas, rejecting this plan in legally binding 2018 referendum by a comfortable margin. Further referenda in 2021, which approved renewed construction at the Lungmen Nuclear Power Plant, and in 2023, in which the electorate approved the construction of two new nuclear power plants, dashed the DPP's plans even further, leaving the DPP in the unenviable situation of administering an expansion of nuclear power that their base never really wanted to happen.

As such, the DPP has spent the last three years dragging their feet on carrying out the construction of the two new power plants authorized under the 2023 referendum, even requiring the courts to intervene on several occasions when pro-nuclear groups sued the government for failing to carry out the legally-binding referendum. Even still, building a nuclear power proposal that the DPP caucus finds acceptable has been exceedingly difficult for the Lai administration, with the President finding himself stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Ultimately, the Lai administration decided on somewhat novel framing for the expansion of nuclear power, which the President hoped would be able to earn the support of both the public and the DPP caucus. While his administration would approve the construction of new nuclear power plants in the country, these plants would be built to replace, rather than supplement, the existing nuclear power plants on the country. The two operational power plants on the island at this point, Maanshan in the south and Kuosheng in the north, are at or near the end of their lifespan. Under President Lai's proposal, these plants would be decommissioned in the next five to eight years, at which point they would be replaced by new, safer nuclear power plants, meant to address the concerns of nuclear skeptics in the DPP caucus. It was this proposal that was finally able to pass the Legislative Yuan, authorizing the first new nuclear power permits in the country since the 1990s.

The two new power plants, one in the north of the country in the Greater Taipei Area in the north, the other in the Greater Kaohsiung area in the south, will use four passively safe Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactors each, giving them a nameplate capacity of ~6000MW each (compared to the ~2000MW capacity of Kuosheng and Maanshan plants). The ESBWR was selected both for its similarity to existing reactors in Taiwan (all Taiwanese nuclear power plants use boiling water reactors, including the ABWR at Lungmen) and for its unparalleled safety (since Taiwan is in a seismically active zone, the extra safety was a critical concern in the planning process). Financed through a combination of loans, private investment, and government grants, these plants will begin construction immediately in 2026, with the expectation that the reactors will start to come online by 2031 and be fully operational by 2033.