Legislative committee to investigate nuclear budget

This article was published by the Taiwan Headlines on May 12, 2006. It reports that the Legislative Yuan's Economic Affairs Committee recently formed an ad hoc subcommittee to investigate why additional spending for Taiwan's fourth nuclear power plant has increased so sharply but its construction has been delayed for so long.

The subcommittee will investigate 227 contracts that were worth more than NT$1 million (US$31,000). These contracts were signed at a price that was 95 percent higher than the bottom line. The subcommittee will also investigate why additional budgets for the nuclear power plant's construction have increased considerably in recent years.

As of 2005, the government had approved NT$143.6 billion in funds for the project, which was about 84.3 percent of the project's total budget of NT$169.7 billion. However, with all these additional budgets, the aggregate engineering project was only 58.6 percent complete. Worse, by 2004, the nuclear power plant's construction was only 43.8 percent complete.

In recent years, the Ministry of Economic Affairs has twice provided extra budget to the project, which amounted to NT$242.7 billion. Now, Taipower is requesting a third supplement of NT$54.3 billion. This is despite the fact that the total delay in construction has added up to 39.5 months.

Doubts have been raised over the enormous supplementary spending and long delays in the construction process, when the current project is compared with Taiwan's first three nuclear power plants. The first plant's initial budget was NT$12.8 billion. It had six funding supplements, and the construction period was extended by three years and three months. The total budget was NT$29.6 billion. The second plant's initial budget was NT$21.9 billion. It had four funding supplements, and the construction period was extended by nearly two years. The total budget was NT$63 billion. The third plant's initial budget was NT$35.8 billion. After funding supplements and construction delays, its total budget was NT$97.5 billion.

In March 2006, the Legislative Yuan's Economic Affairs Committee decided to freeze half of the fourth nuclear power plant's budget in 2006 and to launch an investigation in the aforementioned issues.