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Conflict coverage · Taiwan Strait

Taiwan's last operating reactor shuts down

May 2025Key eventTaiwan

EnergyPoliticalCivil resilience and societal pressure

Maanshan unit 2 is shut down on 18 May 2025, ending commercial nuclear generation in Taiwan. Six reactors are now shut down. The decision completes a phase-out legislated years earlier, and it lands on a system that imports almost all of its primary energy — the share nuclear had carried is absorbed mainly by natural gas, the fuel with the shortest reserve cover. A referendum on restarting the plant in August 2025 drew roughly 74 per cent support on a turnout near 30 per cent, below the threshold required to carry, so it did not pass. The Ministry of Economic Affairs subsequently approved a Taipower feasibility study finding Kuosheng and Maanshan restartable and Chinshan not, and Taipower filed reactivation plans with the Nuclear Safety Commission in March 2026. Regulatory review is estimated at 18 to 24 months.

Why it mattersThis is the structural fact underneath every claim Vigil makes about Taiwanese energy resilience, and it is a completed change rather than a trend: nuclear output is zero and has been since this date. It matters for the pressure system because it removes the one generation source that does not depend on a continuously arriving cargo, and because the restart question is now being contested through two separate tracks at once — a regulatory review at the Nuclear Safety Commission and a political one, with the Legislative Yuan approving a further referendum proposal in August 2026. Vigil records the status and the process. It does not forecast whether any reactor restarts, and no restart should be read as operational or imminent — on the published review timeline none is possible before roughly 2028.
Confidence: HighSources: World Nuclear Association — country profile, Taiwan↗ · MOEA Energy Administration — energy statistics and security stockpile requirements↗ · Taiwan Power Company — generation, coal stocks and reactor filings↗MethodologyCorrections

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