Taiwan is debating big issues these days as it prepares to elect a new president in January. Yet it’s having all too little debate about the importance of domestic nuclear-energy production, which Taipei last year moved to abandon. Taiwanese leaders across the political spectrum are instead playing to popular but shortsighted anti-nuclear fervor.

The 2011 Fukushima meltdown in Japan continues to haunt many in Taiwan, where 23 million people live on a small and similarly earthquake-prone island. Though Taiwan has safely operated...