State utility Taipower expected to submit formal proposals next year
State-owned utility Taipower is expected to submit plans for restarting two of Taiwan’s shut-down nuclear power stations by March 2026, the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) said.
The MOEA said in a statement it has approved Taipower’s evaluation report that found it feasible to restart the Kuosheng nuclear power station in northern Taiwan and the Maanshan nuclear power station in the south.
The Kuosheng station has two 985 MW boiling water reactor units that were shut down in December 2021 and March 2023. Maanshan’s two pressurised water reactor units of 936 MW and 938 MW were taken offline in July 2024 and in May 2025.
Taipower will submit its plans to the Nuclear Safety Commission in March 2026, the MOEA said.
The evaluation report concluded that restarting the Chinshan nuclear power station in northern Taiwan was not feasible because its two reactors were decommissioned more than eight years ago and its equipment has “severely aged”, the MOEA said.
Taipower will also begin safety inspections, including assessments of how badly the two nuclear stations’ equipment has aged and their seismic resilience.
Inspections at the Maanshan plant will require peer review and assistance from the original manufacturer, a process expected to take about one-and-a-half to two years to complete, the ministry said.
The process will take longer at Kuosheng because used nuclear fuel must be removed from the reactor and stored before safety inspections can be carried out, the MOEA said.
The evaluation report was carried out in response to amendments to Taiwan’s Nuclear Reactor Facilities Regulation Act which provide a legal basis for continuing to operate nuclear power plants even after they have entered the decommissioning stage.
With the closure of Maanshan-2 in May there are no operating commercial nuclear plants in Taiwan.
In August a referendum on the restart of Maanshan-2 failed to reach the legal threshold to be valid.
A similar referendum in 2021 narrowly decided not to restart construction of the mothballed Lungmen nuclear power station project, to the east of the capital Taipei in northern Taiwan.
The Lungmen project, known in Taiwan as the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant, was to consist of two advanced boiling water reactor units, each of 1,300 MW net.
Soaring energy demand driven by Taiwan’s semiconductor industry is rekindling the debate about nuclear energy. The country’s electricity needs are expected to rise by 12-13% by 2030, largely driven by the boom in artificial intelligence, according to the Ministry of Economic Affairs.
At one point, nuclear energy from six reactors in Taiwan provided more than half of heavily industrialised island’s electricity.
