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Zwentendorf Nuclear Power Plant: Finished in 1978 but never used

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Re: Zwentendorf Nuclear Power Plant: Finished in 1978 but never used

#61

Post by Propelloni »

ninja3925 wrote: post #2

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.

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).

Re: Zwentendorf Nuclear Power Plant: Finished in 1978 but never used

#62

Post by karmakurtisaani »

someguydave wrote: post #51
awesomeMilou wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I am sure the Russians spent much energy and money to shape the public opinion in Germany to serve their interests.

Not sure if they sold much gas to Germany during the Soviet times. I really don't know if they did, but it was cold war times then after all.

Re: Zwentendorf Nuclear Power Plant: Finished in 1978 but never used

#63

Post by preisschild »

rmu09 wrote: post #43
flembat wrote: post #23

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

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.

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.

Re: Zwentendorf Nuclear Power Plant: Finished in 1978 but never used

#64

Post by fauigerzigerk »

karmakurtisaani wrote: post #62
someguydave wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am sure the Russians spent much energy and money to shape the public opinion in Germany to serve their interests.

Not sure if they sold much gas to Germany during the Soviet times. I really don't know if they did, but it was cold war times then after all.

I don't know how much gas they actually sold at the time, but some major oil/gas pipelines were built during the 1960s, 1970s and early 80s. So the intention was clearly there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia_in_the_European_energy_...

Re: Zwentendorf Nuclear Power Plant: Finished in 1978 but never used

#65

Post by weinzierl »

acidburnNSA wrote: post #31

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 Che…

There is also Angra III in Brasil which has a similar history but with completely different outcome. The plant was bought from Germany in 1985 and then stored for a quarter of a century. Some parts were kept in nitrogen to prevent corrosion.

But contrary to Zwentendorf and Kalkar the project was rebooted (in several attempts) and is currently scheduled to be finished in 2028.

The early nuclear power plants were all individually designed and custom built, before commercial power plants were standardized. The German standard plants are called Konvoi and the individual builds Pre-Konvoi.

Currently Angra II is the only Pre-Konvoi plant still in operation in the whole world. If Angra III goes online, it will be a quarter of a century after the last Pre-Konvoi plant (Angra II) and more than half a century after all the others.

Re: Zwentendorf Nuclear Power Plant: Finished in 1978 but never used

#66

Post by Mashimo »

qngcdvy wrote: post #52
awesomeMilou wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

To me, the opinion about nuclear power kind of feels like the subject of homeopathy in Germany. It feels like in the general population there is a whole that can only be filled by non-science and quackery. The most reasonable people that usually believe in science just get emotional and ignore facts in favor of a vague feeling of defending their beliefs no matter what.

Yes, indeed. But there are still parts of Germany where you should not pick wild mushrooms because of Chernobyl. And the whole Asse II we still have to fix.

Which is a bit more tangable.

Re: Zwentendorf Nuclear Power Plant: Finished in 1978 but never used

#67

Post by torginus »

awesomeMilou wrote: post #32
acidburnNSA wrote: post #31

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 Che…

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…

It's so amusing to see that German anti nuclear policy can be essentially summarized as different eras of 'Russia bad'.

Re: Zwentendorf Nuclear Power Plant: Finished in 1978 but never used

#68

Post by stefantalpalaru »

acidburnNSA wrote: post #31

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 Che…

[dead]

Re: Zwentendorf Nuclear Power Plant: Finished in 1978 but never used

#69

Post by awesomeMilou »

liotier wrote: post #56
xyzzy123 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Yes, I agree, I think a large part of it came from people not understanding the physics.

Even in my physics class in high school, when we spoke about the reactor in Kalkar and watched several documentaries about Chernobyl, our teachers made it seem like explosions from nuclear power plants and nuclear weapons would be the same in yield. Which is an outright lie, given a nuclear reactor usually explodes from a steam or hydrogen explosion.

Re: Zwentendorf Nuclear Power Plant: Finished in 1978 but never used

#70

Post by scotty79 »

Mashimo wrote: post #66
qngcdvy wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me, the opinion about nuclear power kind of feels like the subject of homeopathy in Germany. It feels like in the general population there is a whole that can only be filled by non-science and quackery. The most reasonable people that usually believe in science just get emotional and ignore facts in favor of a vague feeling of defending their beliefs no matter what.

Yes, indeed. But there are still parts of Germany where you should not pick wild mushrooms because of Chernobyl. And the whole Asse II we still have to fix. Which is a bit more tangable.

Sounds like an overblown myth. I've never heard of any places where you can't pick mushrooms because of Chernobyl in Poland
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