The timetable for restarting Taiwan's nuclear power plants has run into scrutiny from experts — bad news for the Lai administration, which wants to speed up the return of nuclear power, and a boost for the anti-nuclear camp.

• Control Yuan nominee Hsu Kuang-jung told the Legislative Yuan that restarting nuclear power plants within two years faces many difficulties, with nuclear safety the key issue.
• In March this year she criticised the government's nuclear policy as lacking logic and raised questions about the earthquake resistance of the Kuosheng and Maanshan plants as well as nuclear waste; she says she still stands by those criticisms.
• Lai Ching-te previously told business leaders that the Maanshan plant was aiming to come back online by the end of 2027 and the Kuosheng plant to complete its restart in 2028 — a clearly tight schedule.
• Asked whether she still stood by the nuclear-free homeland goal, Hsu Kuang-jung said bluntly that President Lai "does not," and added that she had asked the president to explain clearly why he had changed course.
• Fellow nominee Chiu Tai-yuan, speaking on the Chung Lien oil products case, stressed that benzopyrene, a Group 1 carcinogen, is not something that drinking plenty of water takes care of, and that nothing harmful to health should be allowed to end up in people's stomachs.

Outlook: The restart timetable and the nuclear safety controversy will continue to generate heat, and will remain a focus of political contention ahead of the vote on the Control Yuan appointments.