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Zwentendorf Nuclear Power Plant: Finished in 1978 but never used

124 points by onnimonni 2y ago

ninja3925 2y ago
It’s mind boggling how a country can be so rich as to spend millions of manhours on a project and never use it. Maybe we have become too rich as a species.
- flembat 2y ago
  Consider how much is wasted on unwinnable wars, this is nothing.
  - cenamus 2y ago
    Or subsidies for fossil fuels, the dying german car industry etc. Five billion Schilling really isn't a lot
- caf 2y ago
  The https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_Super_Collider https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_Super_Collider comes to mind. Emperor Nero invested millions of man-hours into the Corinth Canal, but that did at least eventually get some use a mere 1,800 years later.
- TomK32 2y ago
  Or we have become stupid enough to start projects that in the case of nuclear power plants are mostly over budget, over time and with the unsolved long-term problem of nuclear waste. Imagine all that money back then invested into solar research and building wind farms.
  - pydry 2y ago
    It wouldnt keep happening were it not for the military wanting to share a supply chain and skills base with a civilian nuclear power industry. That's why some countries gain and then lose interest in nuclear power as well - e.g. Poland has recently and suddenly gained interest in it because of Russia.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- Propelloni 2y ago
  The cost of development at the time were around 5 billion Austrian Schillings. That's around 360 million EUR when the exchange rate was fixed in 1999, in today's money it would be about 560 million EUR (ca. 600 million US$). Last year that would have bought you 42 minutes of superbowl commercials, 4 minutes less of the total amount of available air time (46 minutes).
- pvaldes 2y ago
  As a rule of thumb, If something seemed too good to be true, but then never was adopted at scale; assume that it didn't worked as planned in the real life, and was silently discarded to save face. Lost of trust in a mega-project is a serious issue. To start, the sellers of the project will be pressed to embellish the history and real capabilities of the system. And mega-projects are a magneto for corruption. Part of the money will vanish, then somebody will typically hide it, cutting corners in safety, and then some horrified official looks at it and thinks: "No way I will sign the green light and associate my name with this mess". This is a dilemma. Politicians can't never, ever admit that this never worked (and millions were burnt by their naivety). "best thing since chocolate with grapes, but can't be opened and will never be" is a common defense. Plus <blame deflected to outer group like hippies or public> for better measure. I'm not saying that this is the case here, but it just happens a lot with mega projects and, lets face it, companies working on nuclear projects were all except honest or transparent with the public on those years
xeckr 2y ago
The irony is that a good chunk of Austria's electricity imports have a nuclear origin. Many of those reactors are a stone's throw away from the border.
- Krasnol 2y ago
  There is no irony there at all. Austria, just like many other European countries, are connected to a single grid which has all kinds of energies and where everybody buys on the European Energy Exchange. This grid is what makes the rapid transition to renewable energies possible, and which shows that the base load scare is not more than just one of many FUD tools which aim at slowing down or stopping a transition which is already there in full force. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/10/fixation-on-nuclear-power-in-uk-may-not-help-to-solve-climate-crisis https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/10/...
  - xeckr 2y ago
    The reliance of the Austrian power grid on nuclear energy, combined with their total refusal to produce it domestically is certainly ironic. This phenomenon also predates any notion of green energy transition by several decades.
    - Krasnol 2y ago
      They don't rely on nuclear energy. They rely on the grid. Just like the rest of the connected countries. Just like nuclear country France does. What kind of energy is cheap at the moment there is irrelevant. If nuclear energy would be turned off on the grid, like it happens all the time when the French fleet needs repairs again for example, no lights go out in Austria. Just like no lights go out in France. What you do is the same thing as making fun of humans because they rely on supermarkets and don't go out on the streets and shoot some animals. Times change.
      - xeckr 2y ago
        Following your metaphor, those humans eat meat while voting to outlaw the killing of animals. But only after spending a billion dollars on hunting equipment.
Krasnol 2y ago
Since the article adds no value besides a rage bait, I would like to add that the resulting decision to not build any nuclear power plant without consulting the population first was a significant step for the Austrian population's participation in democratic processes. Resulting in for example this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupation_of_the_Hainburger_Au https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupation_of_the_Hainburger_A...
- scotty79 2y ago
  Global warming turns so many of the environmental fights into saving the flowers while the forests are burning. If noone ever fought for the environment beyond their own personal immediate health we might be in better position now than we are in term of CO2 and millions of people and thousands of ecosystems and species could be saved.
  - Krasnol 2y ago
    > If noone ever fought for the environment beyond their own personal immediate health we might be in better position now than we are in term of CO2 and millions of people and thousands of ecosystems and species could be saved. It is astonishing how far the nuclear bubble is ready to go down the stairs of reason for drama. I mean seriously? Wtf is this? :D Are you joking? This is the equivalent of people who buy a gun to protect their house because the police is useless and being proud of it.
    - scotty79 2y ago
      I don't get your analogy and I don't care about nuclear specifically. There were many examples where dams weren't built to protect local ecosystems. Pumped storage denied. Roads not build that could shorten the travel. Ethanol in fuel that actually emitted more CO2 because of land use change to satisfy the enforced demand. Multi-use bags that require so much energy and resources to build that you need to use them thousand times to get even with single use ones. Paper bags that require more energy and resources to produce which decay or burn releasing CO2. Plug-in hybrids that barely anyone charges that are hauling useless heavy batteries while burning more gasoline. Whole recycling scam mascarading as a solution. All these dumb specific interventions that backfire. The only thing that comes to my mind that actually improved situation was the global ban on fluorocarbons.
t312227 2y ago
imho (!) ... nice articles ... but - there is always a but ;)) yes, part of it was the "anti-nuclear sentiment" ... but i would say, only a smaller part. the "real" reason was internal austrian politics. you have to know the background: during the 1970ties a left-leaning socialist government propelled the country into the future - implemented a large package of reforms -, after decades of societal backlash & stagnation following the 2nd world-war and at first only marginal influence of the late 60ties and early 70ties worldwide students protests etc. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruno_Kreisky https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruno_Kreisky so after zwentendorf was build chancellor kreisky throw all of his popular weight behind it and did something remarkable (i would say: stupid): he said, if the popular vote ends against zwentendorf, he will resign => the liberal-conservative austrian peoples party saw the light to get rid of him and invested heavily into this ... the rest is history... just my 0.02€
- petre 2y ago
  Sounds like a David Cameron all in moment.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- rjzzleep 2y ago
  You throw in left-leaning socialist and liberal-conservative as if it's supposed to clarify the story. Both of those terms meant vastly different things from now 50 years ago. Can you be a bit more precise with your 2 cents so we can actually understand what you're saying? Social Democracy isn't "socialist left", but leaving that aside, what you're saying is that the social democrats of the time tried to create energy independence(opposite of today's social democrats by the way), that's smart. So the Austrian people's party invested into what exactly? What did they do? I see that he was in the Willy Brandt camp who was famous for his Ostpolitik, interesting. I just learned through the links that while he was working on normalizing ties to the east, he worked at the same time on anticommunist policies, which is also interesting. If I get what you're saying correctly then this reminds me of when the plan for Fiber optic development in Germany was sacked to create copper to indoctrinate people with cable TV. It was in the same time frame actually. https://netzpolitik.org/2018/danke-helmut-kohl-kabelfernsehen-statt-glasfaserausbau/ https://netzpolitik.org/2018/danke-helmut-kohl-kabelfernsehe...
Andrex 2y ago
Would make an amazing set for a film.
- geek_at 2y ago
  I live a 15 mins drive from Zwentendorf and I can assure you they are used for so much. They have a "Shutdown festival" (rave party), you can go on a tour in the reactor (even go in the main boiler) and it's also often used for movies or small local productions. Also fun fact: The plant is still producing energy but with Solar panels since they plastered the whole yard and the roof of the plant
  - woodson 2y ago
    The first few editions of the “Nuke” music festival were also held there in the early aughts: https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuke_(Musikfestival) https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuke_(Musikfestival)
  - trailynx 2y ago
    I did that tour a few years back and it was truly impressive and mesmerising - especially standing in the reactor chamber with all the (empty) rods on top of you (they cut a hole into the wall so you can enter there - and it was never in use, so safe to be in there). Pretty crazy. The whole tour was like entering a time capsule and felt like being in a movie or computer game. Everything looking brand new and unused, but old and outdated at the same time. Apart from all the tech and science that they showed and explained this eery time capsule part was sticking with me. And the tour was even free, or almost free as far as I can remember, only getting a slot was hard. Can recommend a visit, if you get the chance.
    - onnimonni 2y ago
      Damn that sounds like a great visit. It seemed like very interesting piece of history and I wanted to share the link here. I'm driving through Europe right now and wanted to go there but nobody answered my emails and the online reservation form doesn't seem to work. Would you know if they still do it around this time of the year?
NegativeLatency 2y ago
Similar to WNP3 in Washington state: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WNP-3_and_WNP-5 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WNP-3_and_WNP-5
flembat 2y ago
I wonder how much it would cost to move it to England, would it be more or less expensive than rebuilding it from scratch.
- KeplerBoy 2y ago
  Depends on whether you want to use it as a museum or as a power plant.
- rmu09 2y ago
  It is one single westinghouse reactor of the same type that was used in Fukushima II. So essentially 60ies technology. I'm no nuclear expert but there surely is much improved more efficient and safer reactor technology now, not to speak of completely obsolete control and safety systems. Also AFAIK it isn't really complete anymore as parts have been dismantled and sold to be used in reactors of similar vintage.
  - preisschild 2y ago
    It is not a westinghouse reactor. Westinghouse doesnt and has never produced Boiling Water Reactors afaik. They mostly do Pressurized Water Reactors. And while Fukushima and Zwentendorf had the same type of reactor (Boiling Water Reactor), it was not the same modell or from the same vendor. Fukushimas reactor was made by General Electrics. Zwentendorfs reactor was made by the German Kraftwerk Union.
    - rmu09 2y ago
      You are right, its a GE design. Boiling Water Reactor doesn't say that much, the soviet RBMK (big reactor with tubes) also are of boiling water type. This ORF story https://noev1.orf.at/stories/504751 https://noev1.orf.at/stories/504751 (in german) claims that the type in Zwentendorf is identical to those in Fukushima (I). Maybe it's not exactly the same type but the designs seem to be very close relatives.
    - hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago
      General Electric Fukushima's BWRs were GE, Hitachi, and Toshiba. It doesn't matter who the official brand is on the side because they're integrated and supported on-site using consulting companies who probably designed them and probably worked for both or all 3 companies at some point. Sorry, not entirely correct: https://www.westinghousenuclear.com/nuclear-fuel/boiling-water-reactor-bwr https://www.westinghousenuclear.com/nuclear-fuel/boiling-wat... I worked for the company of one the main guys who designed BWR-4, consulted on BWRs, came up with SBWR (never used) and ABWR, and submitted ALWR plans to EPRI that never really went anywhere because of public relations and regulatory climate. ALWR became the basis of some SMRs like NuScale. WH and GE Hitachi SMRs are BWRs.
acidburnNSA 2y ago
The one that really breaks my heart is the SNR-300, a cutting-edge liquid metal sodium-cooled breeder reactor capable of unlocking the full potential of the majority isotope (U-238) rather than just the minority (U-235), giving us literally billions of years of current-day whole-earth power from known uranium resources (including seawater and erosion). It was 100% completed and ready to come up to power, but then Chernobyl happened and the people (of Germany) revolted. It is now an amusement park. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNR-300 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNR-300 Another related timing coincidence is that a smaller sodium-cooled reactor in the USA (the EBR-2) demonstrated completely passive shutdown in loss of flow and loss of heat sink accidents without any control rods going in just 2 weeks before Chernobyl happened. Of course today almost no one has heard of it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_Breeder_Reactor_II#Passive_safety https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_Breeder_Reactor_I...
- awesomeMilou 2y ago
  I grew up close to Kalkar and visited the theme park that is now located at the power plant a few times as a kid. If you read the timeline, you can see that the protests started before the Chernobyl disaster. At that point, no government entity wanted the reactor to go online. Some of my family members went to protest there when they were younger. Our physics teachers discussed the plant with us on several occasions as part of the mandatory curriculum. I can just say, Germany's relationship to nuclear is and was always characterized by strange concerns about environmental issues and a drive just to oppose something for vague political associations. It's hard to describe, but feels very similar to virtue signaling.
  - xyzzy123 2y ago
    Probably didn't help that for much of the cold war Germany was a likely candidate for "ground zero" of a nuclear exchange. I think living under that might reasonably influence people's attitudes.
    - liotier 2y ago
      Conflation between weapons and generators was weird then - and it is fossil idiocy at this point. There was a grain of truth at the time when all civilian nuclear programs were the flipside of military programs, but even then the imagery of mushroom clouds over power plants was either ignorant or dishonest.
slyall 2y ago
YouTuber Tom Scott did a video about it: This billion-euro nuclear reactor was never switched on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUVZbBBHrI4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUVZbBBHrI4
- scotty79 2y ago
  Between this and brexit it seems that referendums about concrete things are a terrible idea.
  - Rinzler89 2y ago
    They're a terrible idea when the population is not educated on the topics they're voting on and the possible consequences their vote has, since then they just vote on emotions rather than logic, or let themselves be manipulated by propaganda and fake news.
preisschild 2y ago
I lived nearby my whole childhood. I wish they had turned it on instead of building a huge coal (now russian gas) power plant nearby.
netsharc 2y ago
I've been noticing writing styles in stuff I read. This article, geez... Three paragraphs seem to convey the same message "they built it, the public said no, so it never got switched on". > Completed in mid-to-late 1970s, the plant in Zwentendorf cost around a billion euro to complete. This sentence begins and ends with basically the same word. Feels like a highschooler level writing...
- onnimonni 2y ago
  There's an edit button in the linked page. It's better to contribute than to complain. They both take roughly same amount of time and other option leaves things better than you found them ;)
  - netsharc 2y ago
    That's news to me. Wink.
DrNosferatu 2y ago
Genuine question: How much of the anti-nuclear movement in the West was actually a initiative of the USSR?
- lionkor 2y ago
  The country that became Russia, which is a huge proponent of nuclear power...?
  - llsf 2y ago
    I would think Russia makes more money selling fossil fuels than by promoting nuclear energy.
- mardifoufs 2y ago
  Unless you're saying that Chernobyl was a Soviet initiative... which wouldn't even be super wrong strictly speaking... But if that's not what you meant, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't, then no not really. I think it's hard to overstate how much Chernobyl scared people. If anything the Soviets had everything to win by making nuclear look safe back in the cold war. If you look at Soviet propaganda, nuclear technology was very prominent and a key part of the international image they wanted to project.
  - DrNosferatu 2y ago
    But a West without nuclear power generation benefited the USSR.
jhallenworld 2y ago
Same story as Shoreham Long Island https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoreham_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoreham_Nuclear_Power_Plant Built and powered up, but never used.. "...the state taking over the plant and then attaching a 3 percent surcharge to Long Island electric bills for 30 years to pay off the $6 billion price tag" "Had the Shoreham Nuclear Power Station gone into operation as planned, it would have prevented the emission of an estimated three million tons of carbon dioxide per year"
- bobthepanda 2y ago
  Kind of wonder what the plan they tried to get people to sign onto and failed would've been: > LILCO's problems were compounded by NRC rules in the wake of Three Mile Island, requiring that operators of nuclear plants work out evacuation plans in cooperation with state and local governments. This prompted local politicians to join the growing opposition to the plant. Since any land evacuation off the island would involve traveling at least 60 miles (97 km) back through New York City to reach its bridges, local officials feared that the island could not be safely evacuated.[3] There are currently 1.5M people in Suffolk County today, and millions more in adjoining areas. If that were a peacetime evacuation that would be one of the largest in history.
  - jhallenworld 2y ago
    Yeah, hopeless. Normally nuclear accidents lead to a much more significant destruction of property value, vs. actual loss of life- but on Long Island? Forgetting that for a moment: Fukushima cleanup is estimated to cost $470 to $660 billion (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_disaster_cleanup https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_disaster_cleanup). Just the aggregate single family home total property value (Suffolk and Nassau) is something like $650 billion (median times number of homes- I'm sure this is a massive underestimate considering the mansions on the Gold Coast and the Hamptons). Existing insurance is not enough: https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/nuclear-insurance.html https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/n...
nothercastle 2y ago
Do we need nuclear power anymore? It dose not seem to occupy a very efficient spot as part of the grid anymore due to long spool up and power down times it has to always run at a steady load where what the grid really needs is something that can quickly spool up and down like gas or battery. Its also really expensive because you need all the infrastructure for nuclear plus the infrastructure for steam turbines which all needs to be built and maintained and is very expensive
- hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago
  Blinky, the three-eyed fish, disagrees. ,:) There's no point bothering with an inherently riskier and more expensive technology when cleaner, safer, and cheaper alternatives exist. Gas also becomes obsolete with peaking-capable renewables with battery and/or PES.
  - chickenbig 2y ago
    > There's no point bothering with an inherently riskier and more expensive technology when cleaner, safer, and cheaper alternatives exist. Not sure how to simultaneously maximise the three metrics. How many tonnes of CO2 is equal to one life or 1M USD? https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/impacts-of-energy-sources?Impact+metric=Greenhouse+gas+emissions https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/impacts-of-energy-sourc... https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-production-per-twh https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-p... https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/cost-of-electricity-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/cost-of-e...
    - hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago
      The tipping point for solar and wind being cheaper (LCOE) and cleaner to deploy and maintain rapidly overtook all other forms of energy (coal, gas, nuclear, and hydro) in more and more markets over time thanks to the economies-of-scale of more deployments and improved manufacturing processes. There are some markets where coal or gas is the cheaper and expedient solution for now where local LCOEs are different, but not for long. https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth

124 points by onnimonni 2y ago

It’s mind boggling how a country can be so rich as to spend millions of manhours on a project and never use it. Maybe we have become too rich as a species.

flembat 2y ago
Consider how much is wasted on unwinnable wars, this is nothing.
- cenamus 2y ago
  Or subsidies for fossil fuels, the dying german car industry etc. Five billion Schilling really isn't a lot
caf 2y ago
The https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_Super_Collider https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_Super_Collider comes to mind. Emperor Nero invested millions of man-hours into the Corinth Canal, but that did at least eventually get some use a mere 1,800 years later.
TomK32 2y ago
Or we have become stupid enough to start projects that in the case of nuclear power plants are mostly over budget, over time and with the unsolved long-term problem of nuclear waste. Imagine all that money back then invested into solar research and building wind farms.
- pydry 2y ago
  It wouldnt keep happening were it not for the military wanting to share a supply chain and skills base with a civilian nuclear power industry. That's why some countries gain and then lose interest in nuclear power as well - e.g. Poland has recently and suddenly gained interest in it because of Russia.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
Propelloni 2y ago
The cost of development at the time were around 5 billion Austrian Schillings. That's around 360 million EUR when the exchange rate was fixed in 1999, in today's money it would be about 560 million EUR (ca. 600 million US$). Last year that would have bought you 42 minutes of superbowl commercials, 4 minutes less of the total amount of available air time (46 minutes).
pvaldes 2y ago
As a rule of thumb, If something seemed too good to be true, but then never was adopted at scale; assume that it didn't worked as planned in the real life, and was silently discarded to save face. Lost of trust in a mega-project is a serious issue. To start, the sellers of the project will be pressed to embellish the history and real capabilities of the system. And mega-projects are a magneto for corruption. Part of the money will vanish, then somebody will typically hide it, cutting corners in safety, and then some horrified official looks at it and thinks: "No way I will sign the green light and associate my name with this mess". This is a dilemma. Politicians can't never, ever admit that this never worked (and millions were burnt by their naivety). "best thing since chocolate with grapes, but can't be opened and will never be" is a common defense. Plus <blame deflected to outer group like hippies or public> for better measure. I'm not saying that this is the case here, but it just happens a lot with mega projects and, lets face it, companies working on nuclear projects were all except honest or transparent with the public on those years

xeckr 2y ago

The irony is that a good chunk of Austria's electricity imports have a nuclear origin. Many of those reactors are a stone's throw away from the border.

Krasnol 2y ago
There is no irony there at all. Austria, just like many other European countries, are connected to a single grid which has all kinds of energies and where everybody buys on the European Energy Exchange. This grid is what makes the rapid transition to renewable energies possible, and which shows that the base load scare is not more than just one of many FUD tools which aim at slowing down or stopping a transition which is already there in full force. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/10/fixation-on-nuclear-power-in-uk-may-not-help-to-solve-climate-crisis https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/10/...
- xeckr 2y ago
  The reliance of the Austrian power grid on nuclear energy, combined with their total refusal to produce it domestically is certainly ironic. This phenomenon also predates any notion of green energy transition by several decades.
  - Krasnol 2y ago
    They don't rely on nuclear energy. They rely on the grid. Just like the rest of the connected countries. Just like nuclear country France does. What kind of energy is cheap at the moment there is irrelevant. If nuclear energy would be turned off on the grid, like it happens all the time when the French fleet needs repairs again for example, no lights go out in Austria. Just like no lights go out in France. What you do is the same thing as making fun of humans because they rely on supermarkets and don't go out on the streets and shoot some animals. Times change.
    - xeckr 2y ago
      Following your metaphor, those humans eat meat while voting to outlaw the killing of animals. But only after spending a billion dollars on hunting equipment.

Krasnol 2y ago

Since the article adds no value besides a rage bait, I would like to add that the resulting decision to not build any nuclear power plant without consulting the population first was a significant step for the Austrian population's participation in democratic processes. Resulting in for example this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupation_of_the_Hainburger_Au https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupation_of_the_Hainburger_A...

scotty79 2y ago
Global warming turns so many of the environmental fights into saving the flowers while the forests are burning. If noone ever fought for the environment beyond their own personal immediate health we might be in better position now than we are in term of CO2 and millions of people and thousands of ecosystems and species could be saved.
- Krasnol 2y ago
  > If noone ever fought for the environment beyond their own personal immediate health we might be in better position now than we are in term of CO2 and millions of people and thousands of ecosystems and species could be saved. It is astonishing how far the nuclear bubble is ready to go down the stairs of reason for drama. I mean seriously? Wtf is this? :D Are you joking? This is the equivalent of people who buy a gun to protect their house because the police is useless and being proud of it.
  - scotty79 2y ago
    I don't get your analogy and I don't care about nuclear specifically. There were many examples where dams weren't built to protect local ecosystems. Pumped storage denied. Roads not build that could shorten the travel. Ethanol in fuel that actually emitted more CO2 because of land use change to satisfy the enforced demand. Multi-use bags that require so much energy and resources to build that you need to use them thousand times to get even with single use ones. Paper bags that require more energy and resources to produce which decay or burn releasing CO2. Plug-in hybrids that barely anyone charges that are hauling useless heavy batteries while burning more gasoline. Whole recycling scam mascarading as a solution. All these dumb specific interventions that backfire. The only thing that comes to my mind that actually improved situation was the global ban on fluorocarbons.

t312227 2y ago

imho (!) ... nice articles ... but - there is always a but ;)) yes, part of it was the "anti-nuclear sentiment" ... but i would say, only a smaller part. the "real" reason was internal austrian politics. you have to know the background: during the 1970ties a left-leaning socialist government propelled the country into the future - implemented a large package of reforms -, after decades of societal backlash & stagnation following the 2nd world-war and at first only marginal influence of the late 60ties and early 70ties worldwide students protests etc. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruno_Kreisky https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruno_Kreisky so after zwentendorf was build chancellor kreisky throw all of his popular weight behind it and did something remarkable (i would say: stupid): he said, if the popular vote ends against zwentendorf, he will resign => the liberal-conservative austrian peoples party saw the light to get rid of him and invested heavily into this ... the rest is history... just my 0.02€

petre 2y ago
Sounds like a David Cameron all in moment.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
rjzzleep 2y ago
You throw in left-leaning socialist and liberal-conservative as if it's supposed to clarify the story. Both of those terms meant vastly different things from now 50 years ago. Can you be a bit more precise with your 2 cents so we can actually understand what you're saying? Social Democracy isn't "socialist left", but leaving that aside, what you're saying is that the social democrats of the time tried to create energy independence(opposite of today's social democrats by the way), that's smart. So the Austrian people's party invested into what exactly? What did they do? I see that he was in the Willy Brandt camp who was famous for his Ostpolitik, interesting. I just learned through the links that while he was working on normalizing ties to the east, he worked at the same time on anticommunist policies, which is also interesting. If I get what you're saying correctly then this reminds me of when the plan for Fiber optic development in Germany was sacked to create copper to indoctrinate people with cable TV. It was in the same time frame actually. https://netzpolitik.org/2018/danke-helmut-kohl-kabelfernsehen-statt-glasfaserausbau/ https://netzpolitik.org/2018/danke-helmut-kohl-kabelfernsehe...

Andrex 2y ago

Would make an amazing set for a film.

geek_at 2y ago
I live a 15 mins drive from Zwentendorf and I can assure you they are used for so much. They have a "Shutdown festival" (rave party), you can go on a tour in the reactor (even go in the main boiler) and it's also often used for movies or small local productions. Also fun fact: The plant is still producing energy but with Solar panels since they plastered the whole yard and the roof of the plant
- woodson 2y ago
  The first few editions of the “Nuke” music festival were also held there in the early aughts: https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuke_(Musikfestival) https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuke_(Musikfestival)
- trailynx 2y ago
  I did that tour a few years back and it was truly impressive and mesmerising - especially standing in the reactor chamber with all the (empty) rods on top of you (they cut a hole into the wall so you can enter there - and it was never in use, so safe to be in there). Pretty crazy. The whole tour was like entering a time capsule and felt like being in a movie or computer game. Everything looking brand new and unused, but old and outdated at the same time. Apart from all the tech and science that they showed and explained this eery time capsule part was sticking with me. And the tour was even free, or almost free as far as I can remember, only getting a slot was hard. Can recommend a visit, if you get the chance.
  - onnimonni 2y ago
    Damn that sounds like a great visit. It seemed like very interesting piece of history and I wanted to share the link here. I'm driving through Europe right now and wanted to go there but nobody answered my emails and the online reservation form doesn't seem to work. Would you know if they still do it around this time of the year?

NegativeLatency 2y ago

Similar to WNP3 in Washington state: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WNP-3_and_WNP-5 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WNP-3_and_WNP-5

flembat 2y ago

I wonder how much it would cost to move it to England, would it be more or less expensive than rebuilding it from scratch.

KeplerBoy 2y ago
Depends on whether you want to use it as a museum or as a power plant.
rmu09 2y ago
It is one single westinghouse reactor of the same type that was used in Fukushima II. So essentially 60ies technology. I'm no nuclear expert but there surely is much improved more efficient and safer reactor technology now, not to speak of completely obsolete control and safety systems. Also AFAIK it isn't really complete anymore as parts have been dismantled and sold to be used in reactors of similar vintage.
- preisschild 2y ago
  It is not a westinghouse reactor. Westinghouse doesnt and has never produced Boiling Water Reactors afaik. They mostly do Pressurized Water Reactors. And while Fukushima and Zwentendorf had the same type of reactor (Boiling Water Reactor), it was not the same modell or from the same vendor. Fukushimas reactor was made by General Electrics. Zwentendorfs reactor was made by the German Kraftwerk Union.
  - rmu09 2y ago
    You are right, its a GE design. Boiling Water Reactor doesn't say that much, the soviet RBMK (big reactor with tubes) also are of boiling water type. This ORF story https://noev1.orf.at/stories/504751 https://noev1.orf.at/stories/504751 (in german) claims that the type in Zwentendorf is identical to those in Fukushima (I). Maybe it's not exactly the same type but the designs seem to be very close relatives.
  - hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago
    General Electric Fukushima's BWRs were GE, Hitachi, and Toshiba. It doesn't matter who the official brand is on the side because they're integrated and supported on-site using consulting companies who probably designed them and probably worked for both or all 3 companies at some point. Sorry, not entirely correct: https://www.westinghousenuclear.com/nuclear-fuel/boiling-water-reactor-bwr https://www.westinghousenuclear.com/nuclear-fuel/boiling-wat... I worked for the company of one the main guys who designed BWR-4, consulted on BWRs, came up with SBWR (never used) and ABWR, and submitted ALWR plans to EPRI that never really went anywhere because of public relations and regulatory climate. ALWR became the basis of some SMRs like NuScale. WH and GE Hitachi SMRs are BWRs.

acidburnNSA 2y ago

The one that really breaks my heart is the SNR-300, a cutting-edge liquid metal sodium-cooled breeder reactor capable of unlocking the full potential of the majority isotope (U-238) rather than just the minority (U-235), giving us literally billions of years of current-day whole-earth power from known uranium resources (including seawater and erosion). It was 100% completed and ready to come up to power, but then Chernobyl happened and the people (of Germany) revolted. It is now an amusement park. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNR-300 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNR-300 Another related timing coincidence is that a smaller sodium-cooled reactor in the USA (the EBR-2) demonstrated completely passive shutdown in loss of flow and loss of heat sink accidents without any control rods going in just 2 weeks before Chernobyl happened. Of course today almost no one has heard of it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_Breeder_Reactor_II#Passive_safety https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_Breeder_Reactor_I...

awesomeMilou 2y ago
I grew up close to Kalkar and visited the theme park that is now located at the power plant a few times as a kid. If you read the timeline, you can see that the protests started before the Chernobyl disaster. At that point, no government entity wanted the reactor to go online. Some of my family members went to protest there when they were younger. Our physics teachers discussed the plant with us on several occasions as part of the mandatory curriculum. I can just say, Germany's relationship to nuclear is and was always characterized by strange concerns about environmental issues and a drive just to oppose something for vague political associations. It's hard to describe, but feels very similar to virtue signaling.
- xyzzy123 2y ago
  Probably didn't help that for much of the cold war Germany was a likely candidate for "ground zero" of a nuclear exchange. I think living under that might reasonably influence people's attitudes.
  - liotier 2y ago
    Conflation between weapons and generators was weird then - and it is fossil idiocy at this point. There was a grain of truth at the time when all civilian nuclear programs were the flipside of military programs, but even then the imagery of mushroom clouds over power plants was either ignorant or dishonest.

slyall 2y ago

YouTuber Tom Scott did a video about it: This billion-euro nuclear reactor was never switched on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUVZbBBHrI4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUVZbBBHrI4

scotty79 2y ago
Between this and brexit it seems that referendums about concrete things are a terrible idea.
- Rinzler89 2y ago
  They're a terrible idea when the population is not educated on the topics they're voting on and the possible consequences their vote has, since then they just vote on emotions rather than logic, or let themselves be manipulated by propaganda and fake news.

preisschild 2y ago

I lived nearby my whole childhood. I wish they had turned it on instead of building a huge coal (now russian gas) power plant nearby.

netsharc 2y ago

I've been noticing writing styles in stuff I read. This article, geez... Three paragraphs seem to convey the same message "they built it, the public said no, so it never got switched on". > Completed in mid-to-late 1970s, the plant in Zwentendorf cost around a billion euro to complete. This sentence begins and ends with basically the same word. Feels like a highschooler level writing...

onnimonni 2y ago
There's an edit button in the linked page. It's better to contribute than to complain. They both take roughly same amount of time and other option leaves things better than you found them ;)
- netsharc 2y ago
  That's news to me. Wink.

DrNosferatu 2y ago

Genuine question: How much of the anti-nuclear movement in the West was actually a initiative of the USSR?

lionkor 2y ago
The country that became Russia, which is a huge proponent of nuclear power...?
- llsf 2y ago
  I would think Russia makes more money selling fossil fuels than by promoting nuclear energy.
mardifoufs 2y ago
Unless you're saying that Chernobyl was a Soviet initiative... which wouldn't even be super wrong strictly speaking... But if that's not what you meant, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't, then no not really. I think it's hard to overstate how much Chernobyl scared people. If anything the Soviets had everything to win by making nuclear look safe back in the cold war. If you look at Soviet propaganda, nuclear technology was very prominent and a key part of the international image they wanted to project.
- DrNosferatu 2y ago
  But a West without nuclear power generation benefited the USSR.

jhallenworld 2y ago

Same story as Shoreham Long Island https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoreham_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoreham_Nuclear_Power_Plant Built and powered up, but never used.. "...the state taking over the plant and then attaching a 3 percent surcharge to Long Island electric bills for 30 years to pay off the $6 billion price tag" "Had the Shoreham Nuclear Power Station gone into operation as planned, it would have prevented the emission of an estimated three million tons of carbon dioxide per year"

bobthepanda 2y ago
Kind of wonder what the plan they tried to get people to sign onto and failed would've been: > LILCO's problems were compounded by NRC rules in the wake of Three Mile Island, requiring that operators of nuclear plants work out evacuation plans in cooperation with state and local governments. This prompted local politicians to join the growing opposition to the plant. Since any land evacuation off the island would involve traveling at least 60 miles (97 km) back through New York City to reach its bridges, local officials feared that the island could not be safely evacuated.[3] There are currently 1.5M people in Suffolk County today, and millions more in adjoining areas. If that were a peacetime evacuation that would be one of the largest in history.
- jhallenworld 2y ago
  Yeah, hopeless. Normally nuclear accidents lead to a much more significant destruction of property value, vs. actual loss of life- but on Long Island? Forgetting that for a moment: Fukushima cleanup is estimated to cost $470 to $660 billion (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_disaster_cleanup https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_disaster_cleanup). Just the aggregate single family home total property value (Suffolk and Nassau) is something like $650 billion (median times number of homes- I'm sure this is a massive underestimate considering the mansions on the Gold Coast and the Hamptons). Existing insurance is not enough: https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/nuclear-insurance.html https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/n...

nothercastle 2y ago

Do we need nuclear power anymore? It dose not seem to occupy a very efficient spot as part of the grid anymore due to long spool up and power down times it has to always run at a steady load where what the grid really needs is something that can quickly spool up and down like gas or battery. Its also really expensive because you need all the infrastructure for nuclear plus the infrastructure for steam turbines which all needs to be built and maintained and is very expensive

hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago
Blinky, the three-eyed fish, disagrees. ,:) There's no point bothering with an inherently riskier and more expensive technology when cleaner, safer, and cheaper alternatives exist. Gas also becomes obsolete with peaking-capable renewables with battery and/or PES.
- chickenbig 2y ago
  > There's no point bothering with an inherently riskier and more expensive technology when cleaner, safer, and cheaper alternatives exist. Not sure how to simultaneously maximise the three metrics. How many tonnes of CO2 is equal to one life or 1M USD? https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/impacts-of-energy-sources?Impact+metric=Greenhouse+gas+emissions https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/impacts-of-energy-sourc... https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-production-per-twh https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-p... https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/cost-of-electricity-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/cost-of-e...
  - hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago
    The tipping point for solar and wind being cheaper (LCOE) and cleaner to deploy and maintain rapidly overtook all other forms of energy (coal, gas, nuclear, and hydro) in more and more markets over time thanks to the economies-of-scale of more deployments and improved manufacturing processes. There are some markets where coal or gas is the cheaper and expedient solution for now where local LCOEs are different, but not for long. https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth