From the general mood on Saturday, it was hard to imagine that the 100,000 people who protested in downtown Taipei were mobilizing against a policy that, as they interpret it, is a matter of life and death for themselves and — judging by the large number of babies and children — their descendants.
What with the laughter, gaudy costumes, soap bubbles, incessant picture-taking and lively songs, one would think one had chanced upon a festival of some sort, not a rally against an ill-understood form of energy that, in the wake of the nuclear incident at the Fukushima Dai-ichi power plant in Japan in March 2011, fuels people’s fears of the terrible consequences should a catastrophe occur at one of the nation’s three operational plants.
