The Lungmen Nuclear Power Plant (), formerly known as Gongliao and commonly as the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant (), is an unfinished nuclear power plant in New Taipei City, Taiwan. It consists of two ABWRs each of 1,300 MWe net. It is owned by Taiwan Power Company (Taipower).
It was intended to be the first of these advanced Generation III reactors built outside Japan. The preceding four reactors in Japan were completed in four to five years. Taipower, however, did not award the contract to a single architect/engineering firm, but split the procurement amongst multiple vendors, complicating the project management and increasing costs. In 2000, the project was canceled due to political opposition when it was approximately 10–30% complete, but restarted in February 2001.
A national referendum was proposed in 2014 to decide if construction of the plant should continue, but the referendum was rejected from the ballot for contradictory and confusing language. Taipower submitted a plan to mothball Unit 1, which was by then complete, and freeze construction of Unit 2, starting in 2015. In 2018, Taipower started removing unused fuel from Unit 1 and returned the fuel to the United States. In December 2021, the proposal to continue construction of Unit 2 was narrowly rejected in a referendum. Given that Tsai Ing Wen of the ruling DPP opposes nuclear power and wishes to complete a nuclear phaseout by 2025 (one year after the 2024 Taiwanese presidential election), it is unlikely that construction will ever restart even though it is technologically feasible in principle and not without precedent to finish construction of a nuclear power plant after decades of no construction activity on a legacy construction project.
History
The Fourth Nuclear Power Plant was first proposed in 1978, and Taipower selected the ABWR in 1996 after a competitive bidding process. The reactor is designed by General Electric, but is supported by Hitachi, Shimizu Corporation, Toshiba, and other American, Taiwanese, and other Chinese and international companies.
The application to start construction was submitted on October 16, 1997, and after the license was granted on March 17, 1999, construction of the plant began in 1999 and was expected to be completed in 2004. The preceding four ABWR units in Japan were completed in four to five years each. Taipower, however, did not award the contract to a single architect/engineer, but hired General Electric to build the reactors, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries to supply the turbines and the generators, and other contractors for the rest, making the project difficult to manage. Construction has been delayed by legal, regulatory and political obstacles. The delays in schedule also have increased the cost of the project, due to the inflation of the costs of raw materials.
Initial cancellation
The 921 earthquake in 1999 prompted three legislators to inspect construction progress; they cited rusty rebar and potential seawater seepage into the plant's foundation as potential issues. President Chen Shui-bian was elected along with other Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators in March 2000 on an anti-nuclear platform which included stopping plant construction. DPP legislators called for a halt to the project in April 2000, which led to the suspension of construction in October 2000 by Premier Chang Chun-hsiung when it was approximately 10–30% complete, only to restart the following year. Contractors were idled for 111 days (from 27 October 2000 to 14 February 2001), which caused a 576-day delay towards commercial operation.
Taipower constructed a wharf in 2003 to accommodate delivery of heavy components, such as the reactor vessel. The wharf was beset with construction delays and may have contributed to local beach erosion, prompting further protests. Each reactor vessel delivery was greeted with activist protests and construction delays resulted in the vessels being stored longer than expected, with Unit 1's reactor vessel not installed until 2005.
Design of the plant was carried out by Stone & Webster (S&W), but Taipower canceled its contract with S&W in 2007, leading to protracted litigation from 2007 to 2011. In 2010, aboriginal artifacts were found at the construction site, prompting calls to halt construction again.
In 2011 the Taiwan Atomic Energy Council (AEC) criticized Taipower's management of the project. Taipower was fined by the AEC twice, in 2008 and 2011, for completing design changes without first obtaining approval from the plant's designer, General Electric. Taipower later stated the changes were executed to stay on schedule, and approval was later obtained from GE for 97% of the changes.