Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Zwentendorf Nuclear Power Plant: Finished in 1978 but never used

atlasobscura.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 147 posts

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

#81

Post by rurban »

Toutouxc wrote: post #20
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…

> When Europe turns on all it's power switches at the very same time the grid would collapse without Austria. Would you happen to have a source?

Talked in person to my two friends at the top of the Austrian grid

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

#82

Post by weinzierl »

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

In Bavaria testing of venison is mandatory and consumers have the right to see the measurement protocol for every piece of sold meat.

Because the contamination varies greatly, depending on where it rained during a short timespan in 1986, the amount of usable meat also varies, but is usually between 50% and 70%. The rest, which is not safe to eat is bought by the state.[1]

People are always quick to call Germans crazy because of their attitude towards nuclear energy, but Chernobyl had real world implications to our daily lives and to a degree still has to this day.

[1] https://www.jagd-bayern.de/jagd-wild-wald/jagdpraxis/rcm-mes...

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

#83

Post by onnimonni »

weinzierl wrote: post #65
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 i…

In Finland where I'm from the Olkiluoto III nuclear plant was delayed multiple times and ended up being 9th most expensive building in the world (excluding military bases which we don't have public records):

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_build...

I'm highly skeptical of the schedules and since it's so old equipment I would be very surprised if it will be in budget and start when scheduled. Anyway I hope it works out.

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

#84

Post by onnimonni »

netsharc wrote: post #75

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...

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 ;)

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

#85

Post by someguydave »

ttepasse wrote: post #76
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.

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 indu…

I have no doubt that the German public is full of true believers. That does not exclude Soviet/Russian influence. I don’t have any solid evidence but the Soviets/Russians had several motives, means and opportunities to spread anti-nuclear influence.

Not only would a (West) Germany with abundant cheap nuclear power have energy to compete industrially, they would have the ability to enrich plutonium which might lead to the development of a home-grown nuclear strike capacity within a short range from Moscow. That is, assuming such an idea was politically possible.

All energy is fungible. Certainly the cost of switching is not free, but the time to begin doing that was decades ago.

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

#86

Post by someguydave »

karmakurtisaani wrote: post #71
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That plus well developed civilian nuclear power gives the means to developing atomic bombs, and Russia has every reason to fear a nuclear-armed Germany

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

#87

Post by t312227 »

rjzzleep wrote: post #21
t312227 wrote: post #5

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 & stagnati…

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 energ…

hello,

ok ... lmgtfu ...

so lets go for the details - sadly most of it is in german

public vote on zwentendorf ~ where you can read the details i mentioned - and more:

* https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volksabstimmung_in_%C3%96sterr...

an overview about the reforms of the kreisky government during the 70ties

* http://kreisky100.at/meilensteine/index.html

or about the person "bruno kreisky"

* https://kontrast.at/bruno-kreisky-biografie/

very essential for the people were social and work related reforms, education (hertha firnberg) and women-politics (johanna dohnal)

ad johanna dohnal - a really remarkable person, on-off part of austrian governmental politics from the 70ties to the 90ties ... the english wikipedia page is sadly pretty empty:

* https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johanna_Dohnal

hertha firnberg - another remarkable women in the austrian politics of the 70ties: in short, she made the (higher) austrian educational system available to people w/o a lot (!) of money (higher education schools and universities, which where very elite prior to her reforms)

* https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hertha_Firnberg

the english wikipedia page about her is better than johanna dohnals, but the german version is still more extensive ...

ad parties:

the SPOe back in the 70ties was still a socialistic party - i think they already dropped the revolutionary aspect of socialism back then ...

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Democratic_Party_of_Aus...

the OeVP back then was a "very open to the right", bourgeoise - in its negative connotation - party whose primary "clientel" was - and still is - (very) religious people (christian-catholic), larger companies and rich people.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austrian_People%27s_Party

afaik. it was planned to get the powerplant zwentendorf into operation at a later stage in time, but the famous accident in tschernobyl killed off all those plans by the 2nd half of the 1980ties.

which finally led to the building of the powerplant "Duernrohr"

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%BCrnrohr_Power_Station

yet another 0.02€

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

#89

Post by fauigerzigerk »

someguydave wrote: post #86
karmakurtisaani wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That plus well developed civilian nuclear power gives the means to developing atomic bombs, and Russia has every reason to fear a nuclear-armed Germany

I doubt that this was a major concern as US nuclear weapons have been stationed in Germany since 1960. They remain under US control but the German army is trained to use them in the event of a war. And of course Soviet nuclear weapons used to be stationed in East Germany during the cold war. So for practical purposes Germany was already nuclear-armed.

But who knows. This was 15 years after the end of WW2. It wouldn't be too surprising if there had been lingering fears in Russia about what Germany might be up to outside of NATO.

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

#90

Post by Toutouxc »

rurban wrote: post #81
Toutouxc wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When Europe turns on all it's power switches at the very same time the grid would collapse without Austria. Would you happen to have a source?

Talked in person to my two friends at the top of the Austrian grid

I have a friend who works on the Czech grid (so a neighboring country), and Austria never came up in the conversation as an important factor, it's always Germany causing problems.
Post reply on HN