New energy opportunities in Taiwan
UK Nuclear Outward Mission had a successful visit to Taiwan
World challenges such as energy demand and energy security are opportunities for the new energy industry, and it is the same for Taiwan.
Taiwan Power Company, the stated-owned power company, currently operates six reactors at three sites, plus one other new nuclear power plant with two reactors that has been “moth balled” due to political reasons. Following the Fukushima-Daiichi accident, the Taiwan National Energy Forum announced that the operating reactors would be shut down at the end of their planned lifetimes.
In 2013, Taiwan Power Company (Taipower) and the UK’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) signed a Memorandum of Understanding to co-operate on exchange of information and support for decommissioning and clean-up.
Currently, there are several business opportunities that are priorities for Taipower:
Stakeholder Engagement
- Best practice and lessons learnt when using stakeholder engagement to make decisions on any changes in a nuclear power plant.
Decommissioning Programme Management (Site License Company and supply chain)
- Work Breakdown Structure
- Decommissioning cost assessment & Risk Management
Technical Waste Management and Decommissioning (Site Licence Company and supply chain)
- Waste Transport & Storage
- Technology to reduce high level nuclear waste
- Decommissioning waste amount inventory & waste container
- Re-mediation of contaminated soil and groundwater
- The experience on the encapsulation of highly radioactive wet wastes
- Geologic Repository for high level radioactive waste (including manpower, resource, scope of work, project management)
Life extension
- Revision and evaluation of documents for license application or changes (decrease or transformation) of safety standards in response to changes of status from operations to decommissioning.
- The change in organizational culture required when moving from an operating to a decommissioning environment.
- The regulatory requirements and special measures used for the handling and disposition of the discharged nuclear fuel (solid rods & failure rods), especially the treatment of fuel rods identified as having had a cladding failure.
In the past few years, The UKTI team in the British Office Taipei is working with Taiwan Power to agree on topics and UK capabilities with Taiwanese interests and prospective clients.
UK Nuclear Outward Mission to Taiwan just finished on 2nd October 2015 was particularly successful. UK companies attended the October mission got to have a fast track introduction to Taiwan’s decommissioning programme and position themselves to work on existing and future projects.
Also, the UK companies met with key stakeholders and local Taiwanese firms to discuss potential collaboration as well as opportunities in this market.
The UKTI team in the British Office Taipei looks forward to bringing more collaboration between the UK and Taiwan in the future.
For more information, please feel free to contact Karen Su, UKTI Senior Commercial Officer (Environment and Energy Infrastructure).
Email: Karen.Su@fco.gov.uk
Tel: +886 2 8758 2014