| Orchid Island coastline, mountains | WILLACY: It’s a little volcanic island rising from the ocean all the way into the clouds. The people who live here, the Tao, call this place Lanyu or Orchid Island. | 00:00 |
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| LIN SHIH-LAN: “There is only one Lanyu Island. To me this tribe is very unique. That’s why I appreciate and support this culture | 00:20 |
| Lin Shih-Lan | and I respect this culture very much”. | 00:27 |
| Tao at work in fields | Music | 00:33 |
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| WILLACY: The story of the Tao is remarkable and largely untold. They’re Taiwan’s indigenous people, and without them Asia and the Pacific would be a very different place. | 00:42 |
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| Music | 00:54 |
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| WILLACY: Theirs remains a simple subsistence life but Tao, like Lin Shih-Lan, wonder how long it can last. | 00:59 |
| Shih-Lan | LIN SHIH-LAN: “I was born on this island. My mission is to protect this island that I love. | 01:07 |
| Shih-Lan on motorbike along coast | That’s why I must fight and protect this place before the land is destroyed… before it’s too late”. | 01:16 |
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| Music | 01:25 |
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| WILLACY: Lin Shih-Lan’s enemy is on the Taiwanese main island, a giant nuclear power company that provides electricity to the factories and homes in Taiwan’s cities and towns | 01:34 |
| Waste dump | then brings the waste to Orchid Island. Taiwan Power Company or Taipower has been doing it for decades. | 01:45 |
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| Music | 01:54 |
| Pan across waste dump to Willacy to camera | WILLACY: The Tao of Orchid Island have long survived and thrived fishing and farming. Thirty years ago the government came here and offered to bring jobs. The locals expected a fish cannery, | 01:56 |
| Waste dump | but instead of cans of fish, the Tao now have nearly one hundred thousand barrels of nuclear waste. | 02:09 |
| Hsin-Yu | LIN HSIN-YU: “First they said it was a cannery. They didn’t say it was a nuclear waste, and we were not told”. | 02:20 |
| Willacy driving | WILLACY: For much of the past two years or so I’ve been covering the consequences of a monumental nuclear drama a long way north of here, in Japan. | 02:31 |
| Fukushima file footage | Music | 02:43 |
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| WILLACY: The Fukushima disaster erupted from a combination of lax standards, a disregard for tectonic threats, a powerful nuclear industry and a public sometimes kept in the dark. | 02:48 |
| Power lines | They’re effectively the same elements at play in Taiwan – a nation on uncertain shaky ground, aggressively selling the nuclear option to a modern, power hungry population. After Fukushima though, more and more people on the mainland and here on Orchid Island, aren’t buying the sales pitch and the safety guarantees. | 03:02 |
| Tilt up from ground to waste dump by coast | and here on Orchid Island, aren’t buying the sales pitch and the safety guarantees. LIN SHIH-LAN: “I felt that what happened at Fukushima was unbelievable. | 03:17 |
| Waste dump | How can you control the power of nature? You can’t. The dump is less than 50 metres from the beach. | 03:28 |
| Shih-Lan | What happened at Fukushima could happen to us, tomorrow”. | 03:40 |
| Sky/Sea | Music | 03:46 |
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| WILLACY: Because Taiwan is not recognised as a legitimate independent state, it’s not allowed to ship its nuclear waste offshore for reprocessing. | 03:53 |
| GFX: Waste barrels | So tens of thousands of barrels come here to the Orchid Island bunker. | 04:02 |
| Sky/Sea | Music | 04:08 |
| Unloading of nuclear waste barrels | WILLACY: Taipower insists it’s all low level contamination and all encased in concrete and steel drums. | 04:12 |
| Willacy walks with Chih Gow-Tay | WILLACY: “How high above sea level are you here?” CHIH GOW-TAY: “About 12 metres.” WILLACY: Manager Chih Gow-Tay has been here for eleven years, living right next door to a mass of atomic leftovers. | 04:23 |
| Waste dump | CHIH GOW-TAY: “The site is surrounded by mountains and is facing the sea. | 04:40 |
| Willacy and Gow-Tay by dump | Geographically, it is comparatively safe. | 04:43 |
| Gow-Tay | The residents are five kilometres away from the site. No residents live nearby. So it’s safe”. | 04:49 |
| Dump at edge of coast/Graphic overlay of decaying waste barrels | WILLACY: But with the dump perched on the edge of the pounding Pacific, this is what years of salt air does to steel barrels – leaving thousands of them rusted, ruptured and leaking. | 05:01 |
| Gow-Tay. Super: | CHIH GOW-TAY: “The materials, after mixing with the concrete, can become loose quite easily. They can expand and break the barrels”. | 05:15 |
| File footage. Repackaging of waste/Maintenance work at dump | WILLACY: In recent years, Taipower has been forced to repackage 70 thousand drums of its nuclear waste, a fact that’s hardly calmed the nerves of the Tao of Orchid island. | 05:36 |
| Shih-Lan | LIN SHIH-LAN: “More than 70,000 barrels – it sounds scary, just saying that figure. There shouldn’t be a leak in any barrel, not a single one. Whether there’s a leak in 1 barrel or 70,000, don’t you think it poses a risk to us?” | 05:54 |
| Orchid Island village/villagers |
| 06:11 |
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| WILLACY: Taipower says that when it was building the plant in the early 1980s it held meetings with the islanders and put up signs about the project in Chinese – a language not widely read on the isolated island at the time. The company acknowledges that some key concepts could have been lost in translation. CHIH GOW-TAY: “It is possible the local language doesn’t have the words “waste materials” | 06:16 |
| Gow-Tay | and the picture on the noticeboard looked like a can. They may also have used the word “can” to explain things to the residents. So they might have thought it was a cannery factory”. | 06:43 |
| Photos. Tao people | Music | 06:54 |
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| WILLACY: The Tao have long been treated as second-class citizens with their lands invaded and their culture suppressed. The original people of Taiwan, they’ve been subjected to the rule of the Dutch, the Spanish, the Japanese and now the Han Chinese. | 07:02 |
| Tao fishermen | Today, Taiwan’s Aboriginal people make up just two per cent of the national population. The Tao may be dwindling in number, but their historical influence over the Pacific region has been immense. They are the people who many linguists believe spread the Austronesian language into the Philippines and further south to Polynesia and Oceania. | 07:27 |
| Tao men making canoe | Time honoured rituals exist to this day. As the fishing season nears, the men of the island have gathered to make a traditional canoe, the Tao’s symbol of their deep spiritual ties to the sea. These elaborate wooden boats are still carved by hand by master craftsmen. | 07:57 |
| Tao fishing ceremony | Every year the people of Orchid Island gather by the seaside to hold their most important ceremony, to launch their newly built canoe into the Pacific for its maiden voyage. It’s a show filled with symbolism and is proof that the Tao are determined to hang onto their traditions, their culture and their life at sea. | 08:26 |
| Syaman and farmers working in field | Fishermen and farmers alike sustain the Tao way of life. | 08:53 |
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| SYAMAN JIAPAKTO: Every islander does work on the land. | 08:59 |
| Syaman | The younger generation has been reminded by the old people | 09:05 |
| Syaman and farmers working in field | that they should never abandon the fields”. WILLACY: Syaman Jiapakto and his fellow farmers are burning off, preparing to plant a new taro crop. The starchy local staple grows well here, but contamination is a constant worry. | 09:09 |
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| SYAMAN JIAPAKTO: “We’re concerned that nuclear waste is rubbish that will be around for a million years. | 09:30 |
| Syaman | It has been left without the permission of the tribe. | 09:36 |
| Farmers working in field | It can be compared to another island sending their rubbish to this island”. | 09:42 |
| Taiwanese flag flying at earthquake monitoring station |
| 09:48 |
| Pan left to Willacy to camera | WILLACY: The Taiwanese authorities have always insisted the nuclear waste dump on this island is safe, but the presence of an earthquake monitoring station right near these ruins, tells another story. | 09:54 |
| Earthquake monitoring station | This island is perched on the edge of the Pacific rim of fire and if a tsunami the size of the one that struck Japan | 10:05 |
| Willacy to camera | was to slam into the nuclear dump at the base of this mountain, then the Tao people, who’ve lived here for centuries, would be history. | 10:14 |
| Satellite footage. Taiwan | Music | 10:21 |
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| WILLACY: Taiwan lies near the junction of two tectonic plates. It’s regularly rocked by big quakes. | 10:25 |
| File footage. Fukushima tsunami | Following the Japan mega quake in 2011, there’s a fear that Taiwan’s nuclear facilities and the Orchid Island waste dump are also vulnerable. | 10:32 |
| Waste dump | CHIH GOW-TAY: “If the data we have is telling us it’s safe, then it’s safe. | 10:45 |
| Gow-Tay at dump | We also considered the waves caused by the earthquake off Fukushima and their height of 5.6 metres. | 10:56 |
| Gow-Tay | Our land here is 12.5 metres above sea level so we are higher than the 5.6 metre tsunamis of Fukushima”. | 11:02 |
| File footage. Fukushima tsunami | WILLACY: Except the height of the biggest Fukushima waves wasn’t 5.6 metres, they were more than 15 metres. | 11:16 |
| Shih-Lan on plane | For Lin Shih-Lan it’s time to take the Tao’s fight against the dump to the mainland. He’s heading to the Taiwanese capital Taipei, to lead his people in the biggest anti-nuclear protest in the country’s history. LIN SHIH-LAN: “I hope the President can hear the voice of our Lanyu people. | 11:28 |
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| It has tampered with our body, our mind and the life of our tribe. Therefore, Mr President, please help us”. | 11:50 |
| Taiwan protest rally | Music | 12:03 |
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| WILLACY: They’ve come from all over Taiwan – this rally is bigger than any demonstration seen in post-Fukushima Japan – two hundred thousand people take to the streets of Taipei, among them the Tao. LIN SHIH-LAN: “We must tell the whole world that we have been exploited for 30 years. | 12:11 |
| Shih-Lan at rally | We must make sure our voice is heard by the government. We are suffering… really suffering”. | 12:29 |
| Taiwan protest rally | [Drums/Chanting[ | 12:34 |
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| WILLACY: Rousing his followers, some in traditional war helmets and armour, Lin Shih-Lan wants Taiwan’s leaders to listen to the country’s indigenous minority. | 12:39 |
| Shih-Lan in TV studio | For this Tao farmer from far flung Orchid Island, a guest spot on a national television current affairs program is an opportunity to get his message heard in the capital and throughout the country. | 12:59 |
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| In Taiwan the Tao are often seen as an exotic relic of a bygone era. But in this television studio, Lin Shih-Lan is trying to change all that. | 13:14 |
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| LIN SHIH-LAN: “After massive coverage by the media, attention has turned to us. | 13:28 |
| Shih-Lan | I’m trying to explain to everyone the issue of nuclear waste from the victims’ point of view”. | 13:33 |
| Taiwan protest rally | [Drummers at rally] | 13:40 |
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| WILLACY: Lin Shih-Lan has to compete with other concerns about Taiwan’s nuclear sector. The fallout from Fukushima has many worrying about the dangers posed by three existing nuclear power plants and another on the way. | 13:47 |
| Jinshan nuclear plant | This is Jinshan, Taiwan’s oldest nuclear plant, a little over an hour’s drive from the capital. | 14:08 |
| Inside nuclear plant | LO LIEH-CHENG: “There hasn’t been any major nuclear incident | 14:17 |
| Willacy and Lieh-Cheng inside power plant | since Jinshan power station commenced its commercial operation in 1978”. | 14:24 |
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| 14:35 |
| Willacy and Lieh-Cheng walk in power plant | WILLACY: Like Taiwan’s other two operating nuclear plants, this one is brimful with its own waste. In this pool are three thousand spent fuel assemblies. There’s room for only two hundred more. | 14:40 |
| Willacy to camera inside nuclear plant | “Well I’m standing right on top of Reactor Two and in just a few years this reactor will be decommissioned. The new number four plant is just 70 kilometres from here, but even before it’s been up and running it’s struck a lot of problems. A new study has found dozens of design flaws, while in pre-condition testing it’s been found that there have been blackouts and even fires”. | 14:54 |
| Exterior. Lungmen power plant | And to top it off, Lungmen the number four nuclear power plant, is four times over budget, ten years overdue and located near seismic faults. | 15:18 |
| Fuh-Feng Tsai | FRANK FUH-FENG TSAI: “There are some faults close to the site - maybe several kilometres away from the Lungmen project - but they are not active faults, that’s for sure. And the active faults which are closest to the Lungmen site are about 40 kilometres away from that project”. WILLACY: “That’s an under sea fault?” FRANK FUH-FENG TSAI: “Under sea and also inland faults, both”. | 15:32 |
| Lungmen power station by sea | Music | 16:06 |
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| WILLACY: Taiwan’s nuclear power stations produce about twenty per cent of the nation’s electricity. For Taipower the importance of Lungmen cannot be overstated. The nine billion dollar project will significantly boost the country’s electricity output, but Taipower faces a major problem. There are serious warnings that Lungmen’s two reactors, which are just outside greater Taipei, are susceptible to a Fukushima-style disaster. | 16:12 |
| Koide at computer | Hiroake Koide is a senior nuclear reactor engineer from Japan’s Kyoto University who’s carried out a nuclear accident simulation on the Lungmen facility. | 16:44 |
| Koide. Super: | HIROAKE KOIDE: “If the reactor core melted down and the containment vessel could not contain the radioactivity, several tens of thousands of people would die in the shorter term, and about a million people would die of cancer in the long term – and a vast extent of land would be lost”. | 16:56 |
| Willacy and Tsai by window | WILLACY: It’s an apocalyptic scenario, but one that Taipower’s chief engineer Frank Tsai says is not supported by the company’s own modelling. | 17:22 |
| Fuh-Feng Tsai | FRANK FUH-FENG TSAI: “The modelling told us that if two units of Lungmen project have an accident, then the evacuation zone should be expanded from the original five kilometres to eight kilometres. With that evacuation. there will be no concern of acute hazard to the general public”. | 17:34 |
| Taipei. Night | Music | 18:07 |
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| WILLACY: Crucially if a 30 kilometre Fukushima-style evacuation zone had to be set up, almost certainly the capital Taipei would have to be abandoned. | 18:14 |
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| Music | 18:23 |
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| WILLACY: “Is it true that there have been fires, blackouts | 18:29 |
| Fuh-Feng Tsai. Super: | in the pre-operation testing?” FRANK FUH-FENG TSAI: “That’s when I said the construction problems happened before, but we already fixed all those problems”. | 18:32 |
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| WILLACY: “No more fires, no more blackouts?” | 18:42 |
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| FRANK FUH-FENG TSAI: “No more after that, but some deficits we found during construction are still under correction activities”. | 18:44 |
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| WILLACY: “How many things do you have to correct?” | 18:54 |
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| FRANK FUH-FENG TSAI: “Right now there are 18 items need to be corrected”. | 18:56 |
| Taipei protest rally |
| 19:06 |
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| WILLACY: The new reactors may never fire up – sniffing the political breeze, the government has now promised to hold a referendum on the plant’s future and if the people speak as they did on the streets, then Lungmen goes under and Taipower would go with it. FRANK FUH-FENG TSAI: “We will lose money and then | 19:10 |
| Fuh-Feng Tsai | we will need government to compensate for that”. | 19:28 |
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| WILLACY: “How much compensation?” | 19-33 |
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| FRANK FUH-FENG TSAI: “At least the already invested cost. We need to have the coverage from that or Taipower will run into bankruptcy”. | 19:35 |
| Orchid Island coastline. Tilt up to dump | WILLACY: With no Taipower to honour an undertaking to ultimately remove the waste and the dump from Orchid Island, a toxic legacy looms for generations ahead. | 19:47 |
| Tao school children singing | The Tao want desperately to preserve their heritage and their future, but it’s an uphill battle. Most children on the island have perfect Mandarin and a less than perfect Tao dialect. | 19:59 |
| Gui-Mei | ZONG GUI-MEI [School teacher]: “The young people nowadays have almost forgotten it, so we have to teach the kids right from the start. We have to teach them our culture and make them realise how important it is”. | 20:18 |
| Willacy with children | WILLACY: Zong Gui-Mei is a school teacher on Orchid Island working to revive their dying language and a broader interest in their rich and important heritage. | 20:30 |
| Gui-Mei | ZONG GUI-MEI: “It’s about preservation. We’ve been influenced by modernisation. The children have learnt the other cultures from outside. Our culture has been gradually eroded by the impact of outside cultures”. | 20:46 |
| Stills. Children on beach holding ‘No Nukes’ signs | Music | 21:00 |
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| WILLACY: The fight against the nuclear dump has become a defining lesson for a new generation that might have been ambivalent about their identity. The signs they’re holding are emphatic – “No Nukes”. | 21:04 |
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| Music | 21:17 |
| Shih-Lan | LIN SHIH-LAN: “This is a place where I am going to live the rest of my life -- that’s why I must fight. When people come to invade you – to bully you – I must fight no matter what, because they have invaded our land, our people, and our right to survival, our human rights”. | 21:22 |
| Willacy and Shih-Lan looking at footage on laptop | WILLACY: “Thirty years after the first barrel of waste landed on their island, the Tao have had enough. They want the fish cannery that never was, off their traditional land. Their protests are gathering in strength and spirit. | 21:43 |
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| LIN SHIH-LAN: “By throwing the barrels, we are telling the government we don’t want their stuff. We are very angry. Very, very angry”. | 22:02 |
| Taro field |
| 22:12 |
| Shih-Lan working in taro field | WILLACY: Lin Shih-Lan is the same age as the nuclear waste dump on his island and he’s prepared to spend the rest of his life fighting to get rid of it. It’s a struggle he’s taken over from his elderly father and the old man is proud that his son has inherited the Tao fighting spirit. | 22:18 |
| Hsin-Yu | LIN HSIN-YU: “I would be delighted if he could get the dump removed because that would show that my children have inherited my personality. The people from our six townships would be delighted to watch television and know that Lin is so brave and that I have such a good boy”. | 22:40 |
| Willacy and Gow-Tay walk by dump | WILLACY: Even the manager of the dump has had to confront the terrible prospect that after the tsunami and meltdowns at Fukushima anything is possible and that Orchid Island is also vulnerable to an unpredictable catastrophe. CHIH GOW-TAY: “If the extent of the disaster is | 23:02 |
| Gow-Tay | beyond what humans can control, then it can happen to Orchid Island or to other places. Then it is beyond my capabilities of prediction and abilities”. | 23:22 |
| Orchid Island coastline/scenery | Music | 23:50 |
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| WILLACY: An admission like that, while refreshingly honest, is no comfort to the Orchid Islanders. | 23:52 |
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| Music | 23:58 |
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| LIN SHIH-LAN: “I want to tell the government that our whole tribe will be finished. Taiwan hasn’t provided us with any evacuation plan. | 24:09 |
| Shih-Lan/ Coastline | In the event of a tsunami, where are we, as a whole tribe, going to move to? Once the land has been contaminated, can it be occupied? No, it can’t”. | 24:20 |
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| Music | 24:30 |
| Credits: | Reporter – Mark Willacy Camera – Geoffrey Lye with additional footage – Horng Chuen-Jing. Editor – Garth Thomas Producer – Ian Altschwager | 24:39 |