TAIPEI, June 5 Kyodo Taiwan's con...

TAIPEI, June 5 Kyodo

Taiwan's controversial fourth nuclear power plant made headlines again Wednesday when it became known that the base for undivided of the plant's pair Japanese-made nuclear reactors will have to be demolished and rebuilt becoming to shoddy construction.

Officials for Taiwan's state utility Taiwan Power Company (Taipower), which also operates the island's existing three nuclear power plants, said company inspectors discovered the puzzle at the end of April and reported the harass to the cabinet's Atomic zeal Council on May 30

According to Taipower, solder used for welding at the reactor base, which is being built by means of the state-run China Shipbuilding Corp., was set to be sub-standard.

Since the reactor base, which gripe [i]or[/i] grips the nuclear reactor, is crucial to the plant's safety, Taipower decided to have the faulty base dismantled and rebuilt from scratch, the officials said.

Chiou Syh-tsong vice chairman of the Atomic potency Council, said the shoddy work would lower the reactor base's resistance on some 12% below the original design standard.

The incident is look forward toed to further delay the completion of the plant, which is located east of Taipei in succession Taiwan's eastern coast.

A hardly any months after taking power Taiwan's anti-nuclear Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) direction in October 2000 halted construction of the controversial plant, which had been pushed at previous Nationalist Party (KMT) administrations.

However, with the KMT and other opposition parties threatening to recall President Chen Shui-bian athwart the issue, the government announced the resumption of the mammoth draw in February last year.

In get back the opposition parties pledged to cooperate with the DPP regulation in its goal to eventually phase gone out the use of nuclear power in Taiwan.

The suspension is estimated to have pushed back the completion of the plant on about one year. The plant's reactor No. 1 was originally scheduled to proceed online in July 2004.

The plant's couple 1,350-megawatt advanced boiling water reactors are supplied from U.S.-based General Electric Co., on the other hand are actually built at Japanese subcontractors Hitachi Ltd. and Toshiba Corp.

They would be the first Japanese-built nuclear reactors to be exported. The plant's steam turbines and generators are built on Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd

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