Voters in Taiwan are heading to the polls on Saturday for a referendum on whether to restart the island's Maanshan nuclear plant. It was shut down in May, fulfilling a pledge by the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to phase out nuclear power by 2025.

Five public debates were held in the run-up to the Taiwan nuclear referendum, highlighting divisions over national security, economic and environmental concerns.

Security fears drive debate

The nuclear vote is taking place amid Beijing's increased military aggression around Taiwan, as it considers the self-governing democracy to be Chinese territory and has not ruled out the use of force to "reunify" the island with the mainland.

"Going nuclear-free would undermine national security," said Huang Shih-hsiu, the founder of the civic group Nuclear Mythbusters, during a livestreamed debate. "If [China's] People's Liberation Army blockades Taiwan, our natural gas would last less than ten days," he claimed.

Chia-wei Chao, of the Taiwan Climate Action Network (TCAN) and an assistant professor at National Taiwan University, told DW in May that energy consumption "would go down, or even halve, in the case of a blockade, so the reserves could last longer."

There are also environmental concerns from anti-nuclear activists, many of whom warn that operating nuclear plants carries major risks from natural disasters.

"Taiwan faces earthquake-related risks that cannot be underestimated. The Fukushima accident is a warning we must heed," Wu Ya-hsin, a 20-year-old civic representative, said in another broadcast debate, referring to the March 2011 nuclear disaster in Japan.

Maanshan shutdown sparks vote

Historically, Taiwan had six nuclear reactors across three sites on the island, each originally expected to operate for 40 years.

In May 2025, just days after the Maanshan plant on Taiwan's southern coast was shut down, opposition lawmakers from the Taiwan People's Party (TPP), backed by the much larger Kuomintang Party (KMT), passed a bill for a referendum on whether to keep the plant running "after authorities confirm there are no safety concerns."

Recent polls suggested that more than 60% of Taiwanese would support restarting the plant. Still, the final decision rests on a government safety assessment.

Taiwan held an earlier referendum in 2018 in which voters supported using nuclear power to help achieve green energy goals. But a 2021 ballot on restarting construction of a mothballed nuclear plant failed due to low voter turnout.

Taiwan's energy security under scrutiny

Taiwan's energy supply heavily relies on imports, which accounted for about 96% of its total, according to the latest official data.

Despite nuclear power contributing merely 4.2% of Taiwan's electricity last year, proponents argue that a full phase-out would leave the island vulnerable in the event of a Chinese blockade in which energy shipments could be disrupted.

Several prominent analysts from the United States, including former Deputy National Security Advisor Matt Pottinger, have also publicly emphasized the importance of Taiwan's nuclear power for both energy independence and defense.

"Nuclear provides a lot of independence, which might be helpful in situations of crisis, because you can store [nuclear] fuel on site for several years," Martin Pache, spokesperson of German nuclear technology association Kerntechnik Deutschland, told DW.

However, Tsaiying Lu, a new energy geopolitics expert at DSET, a Taiwanese technology think tank, emphasized that nuclear energy supply also carries potential risks of instability in a wartime scenario.

She highlights that Ukraine's nuclear reactors have experienced temporary shutdowns or disconnections due to damaged power lines and safety precautions amid ongoing Russian military aggression.

Instead of focusing on developing nuclear power, Lu told DW that Taiwan should take steps to diversify its energy suppliers. She suggested that a broader mix of liquefied natural gas (LNG) and coal imports would ensure a "flexible supply mechanism" in times of crisis.

Can Taiwan learn from Germany's nuclear phase-out?

Amid heated public debate in Taiwan, the European Union's framing of nuclear power as a tool for the green energy transition has also become a central point of contention.

The EU has classified nuclear power as environmentally sustainable under its taxonomy — a list of areas in which investments can be made to combat climate change — on the condition that radioactive waste can be safely managed, although no permanent disposal site has yet begun operation in the world.

Germany, however, as the leading anti-nuclear voice in Europe, completed its phase-out in 2023 with the closure of its last three power stations.

"Taiwan is not Germany," KMT lawmaker Weng Hsiao-ling said during the second public debate. "Germany still has coal, and about 50% of its energy now comes from renewables… Can Taiwan really do the same?"

Currently, more than 80% of Taiwan's electricity supply comes from fossil fuels, notably natural gas and coal, with a much smaller but growing contribution from renewables sitting at about 12% — falling short of the government's original target of 20% by 2025.

However, in Taiwan's Pingtung County, home to the Maanshan plant, locals have voiced serious concerns about the environmental and safety risks if the reactor were restarted, given its location on a seismic fault.

During protests against the referendum, several local industry representatives pointed out that Pingtung is a farming and fishing county that cannot afford the risks of a nuclear disaster.

"After 40 years of safe operation, the plant was finally shut down," county magistrate Chou Chun-mi told local media. "Yet now the entire country is being asked to decide whether to restart it, a move residents of Pingtung find unacceptable."

DW correspondent Tzu-Hsin Chou contributed reporting

Edited by: Keith Walker