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

101–110 of 147 posts

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

#101

Post by bobthepanda »

jhallenworld wrote: post #97

Same story as Shoreham Long Island 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…

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.

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

#102

Post by llsf »

lionkor wrote: post #92
DrNosferatu wrote: post #88

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

The country that became Russia, which is a huge proponent of nuclear power...?

I would think Russia makes more money selling fossil fuels than by promoting nuclear energy.

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

#103

Post by Krasnol »

xeckr wrote: post #16
Krasnol wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 d…

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.

Not really. They've spent that money on hunting equipment only to realize that it would have been more clever to ask the people whose money they spend, if they should do it.

This is why it never happened again.

Learning from mistakes is something good.

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

#104

Post by Krasnol »

pyrale wrote: post #41
Krasnol wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 d…

> like it happens all the time when the French fleet needs repairs again for example The one time this happened in 40 years was quite a problem for European supply reliability.

When is this supposed to be? Because the time I've been talking about is not that long ago...

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

#105

Post by Krasnol »

realusername wrote: post #45
Krasnol wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 d…

> 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 It happened a single time in 40 years and the European grid almost died so no, they do rely on nuclear whether they are happy or not.

What are you talking about? Where is the grid "almost died"? :D

Do you have any trustworthy sources for that?

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

#106

Post by jhallenworld »

bobthepanda wrote: post #101
jhallenworld wrote: post #97

Same story as Shoreham Long Island 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…

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 inv…

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). 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/n...

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

#107

Post by thescriptkiddie »

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 believe the real reason that reactors like this never took off is that the US government pushed hard against them due to "proliferation concerns". Which may or may not have been a cover story for saving the fossil fuels industry.

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

#108

Post by trailynx »

onnimonni wrote: post #36
trailynx wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

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?

hey, I checked as well and it looks like they currently don't have any tours online. I can forward you the contact from when we booked our tour at the time if you want. sent you a linkedIn connection request (I think, connected some dots).

Also, I found this [0] post with lots of pictures [1] from the Technical University of Graz about a visit, and the pictures give a good taste of what you might see there.

btw, if you come to pass Austria (Vienna or rural Upper Austria) and want to grab a beer or something let me know - seems like we are both working as engineering managers and share some interests, might be interesting :)

[0] https://www.tugraz.at/institute/iee/news-events/article/fueh... [1] https://www.tugraz.at/institute/iee/bildergalerien/2019-07-1...

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

#109

Post by scotty79 »

Krasnol wrote: post #100
scotty79 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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…

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.

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

#110

Post by Rinzler89 »

scotty79 wrote: post #72
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.

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.
Post reply on HN