After years of controversy and protests, the government decided to select Nantien Village in the county’s Tajen Township as one of the possible disposal sites for low-radioactive waste from its three existing nuclear power stations.

The Taitung County Council on Wednesday invited representatives from the Ministry of Economic Affairs, from state utility Taiwan Power Corporation and from groups of local residents to discuss the issue at a public hearing.

According to the official proposal, each locality chosen as a potential site will have to organize a referendum, but the Taitung County Council has repeatedly failed to pass the necessary legislation.

Participants in Wednesday’s hearing also voiced strong opposition to the choice of Nantien. The area was geologically unstable, making it unsuitable to provide a permanent home for the low-radioactive materials, geologist Chiang Kuo-chang said.

The chairman of the county’s tourism association, Yang Wen-ta, said the issue was larger than just Nantien and concerned not only environmentalists and the local aboriginal population, but the whole of Taitung County.

Before the hearing got under way, an organic farmer carrying a banner with an anti-nuclear slogan was prevented entrance to the meeting and shown into a police vehicle. An environmental activist who came outside to ask about the situation was also forced into the car and taken to a police station, reports said. Both said they were kept at the precinct office for two hours.

The farmer, Wang Hsu-lang, said he hadn’t entered the hearing yet, and was not planning on disrupting the proceedings.

Environmentalist Hsu Lan-hsiang said she had received visit at home from police Tuesday evening, and was then forced to leave Wednesday’s hearing even before it had started.

Police said the identity of the two individuals had been unclear, so all they wanted was for them to write down their basic ID data. The two refused because they felt they had done nothing wrong, thus making their stay at the precinct longer than necessary, police told reporters. Both later returned to the hearing, reports said.

Public concern about nuclear waste began many years ago when Taipower stored its refuse on Orchid Island, a remote island off southeast Taiwan mainly inhabited by aboriginals.

Protests and rising sympathy for the local population forced the state-run company to go on a search for alternative sites.

Apart from Nantien, the other candidate is Wan-an on one of the islands of the Penghu archipelago, halfway between Taiwan’s main island and China.