Qualla: Maanshan Nuclear Power Plant

Maanshan Nuclear Power Plant: Introduction

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sgroey, CC BY-SA 4.0. From the beach at South Bay in Kenting, tourists in swimsuits and sunscreen have always been able to see the domed containment structures of the Maanshan Nuclear Power Plant on the headland to the west. It is an unlikely juxtaposition — one of Asia's most popular beach resorts sharing a coastline with a nuclear generating station — and it captured something essential about Taiwan's energy story: a small, densely populated island with almost no fossil fuel reserves, doing what it had to do. For forty years, Maanshan's two reactors generated enough electricity to power millions of homes. The last reactor was disconnected from the grid on May 17, 2025.

Image: Sgroey | CC BY-SA 4.0

Maanshan Nuclear Power Plant: The Third Plant

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CEphoto, Uwe Aranas, CC BY-SA 3.0. Maanshan was Taiwan's third nuclear power plant, and when its second reactor came online in 1985, it became the island's second-largest generating facility by capacity. Each of the two units was a three-loop Westinghouse pressurized water reactor, the same fundamental design used...

Image: CEphoto, Uwe Aranas | CC BY-SA 3.0

Maanshan Nuclear Power Plant: Four Decades of Incidents

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit prattflora, CC BY-SA 3.0. The plant's operational record was long and largely uneventful in the ways that matter most, but not without incident. In July 1985, a turbine blade failure led to a fire and reactor trip at Unit 1; the resonant torsional vibration from the electrical system had driven the blades...

Image: prattflora | CC BY-SA 3.0

Maanshan Nuclear Power Plant: The Question of Renewal

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Raiden0621, CC BY-SA 4.0. As the reactors approached the end of their forty-year operating licenses — Unit 1 in 2024, Unit 2 in 2025 — Taiwan found itself in an intensifying debate about nuclear energy's role in its future. The island had committed to a nuclear-free policy in 2017, a goal shaped by public...

Image: Raiden0621 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Maanshan Nuclear Power Plant: What Remains on the Headland

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit M. Weitzel, CC BY-SA 3.0. The physical plant occupies a headland on the western shore of the Hengchun Peninsula, where the warm currents of the Taiwan Strait meet the shallower waters near South Bay. The containment domes, visible from the beach for as long as anyone in Kenting can remember, now sit silen...

Image: M. Weitzel | CC BY-SA 3.0