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TAIPEI: Voters in Taiwan are deciding Saturday whether to dismiss seven opposition members from the legislature and on a return to nuclear power five months after the last operating reactor shut down.
The recall votes, the second in a month, are an attempt to restore ruling party control of the legislature after the Democratic Progressive Party lost its majority in a 2024 election.
The prospects for doing so appear dim after 24 members of the opposition Nationalist Party all survived a first round of recall votes on July 26.
The Democratic Progressive Party won the presidency in 2024 but neither party took a majority in the 113-seat legislature. The Nationalists, also known as the Kuomintang or KMT, won 52 seats, one more than the DPP.
The Nationalists have teamed up with a third party, the Taiwan People’s Party, to pass legislation, much to the consternation of the ruling DPP.
The referendum on nuclear power
The DPP has been phasing out nuclear power, which once provided about 20 percent of Taiwan’s electricity. The last operating reactor at the self-governing island’s three nuclear plants was shut in May after 40 years in service.
But the same month, the legislature approved a proposal from the Taiwan People’s Party to hold a referendum on extending nuclear power, with the support of the Nationalists.
The referendum asks voters if the most recently shut nuclear plant should continue operating, assuming regulators agree it is safe to do so. The Maanshan plant, commonly called the third nuclear power plant, is near Taiwan’s southern tip.
Backers of nuclear power have said it would reduce electricity bills and help meet the growing demand for power from artificial intelligence applications.
Jensen Huang, the Taiwan-born founder of American chip giant Nvidia, backed nuclear power when asked about the issue after arriving at the airport Friday in the capital, Taipei.
Citing AI’s need for energy, he told reporters he hopes that all options will be explored. “There’s excellent technologies for sustainable energy – solar and wind,” he said. “And nuclear is an excellent option.”
In May, Nvidia announced it would team up with Taiwan electronics manufacturer Foxconn to build an AI supercomputer for the island’s researchers and companies.

SEOUL: South Korea fired warning shots at North Korean soldiers that briefly crossed the heavily fortified border earlier this week, Seoul said Saturday after Pyongyang accused it of risking “uncontrollable” tensions.
South Korea’s new leader Lee Jae Myung has sought warmer ties with the nuclear-armed North and vowed to build “military trust,” but Pyongyang has said it has no interest in improving relations with Seoul.
Seoul’s military said several North Korean soldiers crossed the border Tuesday while working in the heavily mined Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) separating the two Koreas.
The incursion prompted “our military to fire warning shots,” Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement, adding “the North Korean soldiers then moved north” of the de facto border.
Pyongyang’s state media said earlier Saturday that the incident occurred as North Korean soldiers worked to permanently seal the frontier dividing the peninsula, citing a statement by Army Lt. Gen. Ko Jong Chol.
Calling the event a “premeditated and deliberate provocation,” Ko said Seoul’s military used a machine gun to fire more than 10 warning shots toward the North’s troops, according to the official Korean Central News Agency.
“This is a very serious prelude that would inevitably drive the situation in the southern border area where a huge number of forces are stationing in confrontation with each other to the uncontrollable phase,” Ko said.
The last border confrontation between the arch-rivals was in early April when South Korea’s military fired warning shots after around 10 North Korean soldiers briefly crossed the frontier.
North Korea’s military announced last October it was moving to totally shut off the southern border, saying it had sent a message to US forces to “prevent any misjudgment and accidental conflict.”
Shortly after, it blew up sections of the unused but deeply symbolic roads and railroad tracks that connect the North to the South.
Ko warned that North Korea’s army would retaliate against any interference with its efforts to permanently seal the border.
“If the act of restraining or obstructing the project unrelated to the military character persists, our army will regard it as deliberate military provocation and take corresponding countermeasure,” he said.
Under Lee’s more hawkish predecessor, relations between the two Koreas had sunk to one of their lowest points in years.
After Lee’s election in June, he pledged to pursue dialogue with the nuclear-armed North without preconditions, saying last week his government “will take consistent measures to substantially reduce tensions and restore trust.”
Even so, South Korea and the United States began annual joint exercises on Monday aimed at preparing for potential threats from the North.
Lee described the drills as “defensive” and said they were “not intended to heighten tensions.”
North Korea – which attacked its neighbor in 1950, triggering the Korean War – has long been infuriated by such exercises between the US and the South, decrying them as rehearsals for invasion.
Hong Min, a senior analyst at the Korea Institute for National Unification, said Pyongyang was again accusing Seoul of pursuing a “dual approach” with its latest outburst – calling for dialogue while in its view raising military tensions.
Pyongyang’s leader Kim called earlier this week for the “rapid expansion” of the North’s nuclear weapons capability, citing the ongoing US-South Korean military exercises that he claimed could “ignite a war.”
His powerful sister has since said Seoul “cannot be a diplomatic partner” of the North, and that Lee “is not the sort of man who will change the course of history.”