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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

#71

Post by karmakurtisaani »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #64
karmakurtisaani wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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_...

That's interesting. Even if the volume was low, perhaps the Russians were nevertheless interested in sowing dissent in the German public opinion. In particular, making sure the energy sector is always dependent on some foreign source.

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

#72

Post by scotty79 »

slyall wrote: post #58

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

Between this and brexit it seems that referendums about concrete things are a terrible idea.

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

#73

Post by scotty79 »

Krasnol wrote: post #4

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_A...

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.

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

#74

Post by NikolaNovak »

datadeft wrote: post #42
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…

If we have invested the same amount of money to make reliable, safe nuclear power plants that take up fraction of the space "rewnewables" use the world would be a better place. Btw. there is nothing really renewable in solar planels and wind mills. "When wind turbine blades reach the end of their 20-to-25-year service lives, they usually end up in landfills." https://cen.acs.org/environment/recycling/companies-recycl…

Not entirely disagreeing with your key point, but that's not what "renewable" means to me.

Renewable is about fuel, not generator.

If gas station turbine is compared to solar panel and windmill blade, then natural gas and underground oil are compared to sunlight and wind.

Underground oil and gas are limited resources baked many many millions of years ago, pretty much over similar timescales.

Wind and sunlight,for the purpose of this discussion, are self renewing - we will not run out of them.

Your discussion is more on how ecological the actual generators are, and that's a fair discussion to have, but comparison is not a wind mill blade and a car, it's windmill blade and solar panel to nuclear reactors and gas power plants.

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

#75

Post by netsharc »

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...

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

#76

Post by ttepasse »

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.

Deja Vu: I wrote a comment here some days ago arguing that while Russian/Soviet influence certainly exists public opinion is majorly homegrown:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40331523

People from the anglosphere often seem to think that Russian and now Qatari gas is a replacement for the nuclear power, which is rather wrong: The vast majority of Germany's natural gas usage is residential for heating and in industry.

https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/data-tools/energy-st...

Gas is hard to replace ad hoc with electricity because you'd have to replace boilers in millions of homes and apartments, a multi-decade infrastructure project.

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

#77

Post by ttepasse »

scotty79 wrote: post #70
Mashimo wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If I remember correctly that was a result how the fallout was transported via the jetstream - and if it did rain, hence a rather non-uniform distribution. The first fallout cloud went from Ukraine over Poland to Scandinavia but it did not rain down. A second cloud went westwards over then Czechoslovakia and then southern Germany, hence the impact. The German Agency for Radation Protection has this map of Caesium ground contamination in 1986:

https://www.bfs.de/SharedDocs/Bilder/BfS/DE/ion/notfallschut...

The mushroom thing is because of bioaccumulation: Mushrooms seem to ingest the particles from its surrounding ground/ground water, hence a higher concentration of radioactive material in a smaller volume. And then wild boars eat those mushrooms, concentrating it even further. Caesium 137 has a rather short half life of only 30 years, but through the process of accumulation/concentration still today meat from wild boars shot in that region gets tested and is often over the allowable limit to eat.

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

#78

Post by SahAssar »

felsokning wrote: post #24
Andrex wrote: post #7

Would make an amazing set for a film.

> Would make an amazing set for a film. Correlated: SVT did a concert in one[1][2]. [1] - https://www.svtplay.se/video/e56v35j/radiokoren-i-reaktorhal... [2] - https://youtu.be/Q560cKnreSk Edit: Added Trailer

For non-swedes: SVT is Swedens public television.

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

#79

Post by weinzierl »

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…

I can confirm that the protests were already hot before 1986. Chernobyl was just the final nail in the coffin. But this is often forgotten.

Another thing that is often forgotten and at least partially contributed to the outcome of Kalkar never going online, is a substantial change in the political climate regarding the question of nuclear proliferation.

It might seem strange now, but 40 years after WW II Germany was probably closer to getting its own nuclear inventory than today. While it was far from uncontroversial at the time it was not a heretic idea either and widely discussed.

A fast breeder like Kalkar would have been an important step in that direction, as would have been the heavy-water reactor in Niederaichbach, which only ran for about a year.

To complete the nuclear fuel cycle and to produce the plutonium for Kalkar a reprocessing plant would have been necessary which again had enabled Germany to produce weapons-grade nuclear material. The planned and partially completed facilities in Wackersdorf were abandoned in the 80s too.

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

#80

Post by rurban »

xeckr wrote: post #17
rurban wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As Austrian it's a national pride, and certainly not ironic. Germany only followed after their Wackersdorf debacle, matching Tschnernobyl, and then finally Fukushima. The rest of Europe is still in the hands of the energy lobbies. And Austria does not rely on nuclear at all. It's rather the other way round, that all the others rely on Austria (and Swiss) expensive peak energy from their high mountains. When Europe tu…

In 2023, 12% of Austria's electricity had a nuclear origin [0]. As for the risk of a meltdown, look at a map of reactors in Europe. The reactors Austria is buying that power from aren't much further away from major population centres than Zwentendorf. [0] https://w3.windmesse.de/windenergie/pm/46044-ig-windkraft-at...

Austria does not rely on nuclear at all. The biggest power station in the country (south of Graz) went off grid a few year ago, because gas and coal became too expensive, but could be turned on immediately.

Zwentendorf of the very same size cannot be turned on again fortunately. The meltdown and earthquake risk with all the insecure Russian reactors around is of course still around.

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