This is the Zwentendorf power plant in Austria.

It’s a 700 MW nuclear power plant located along the Danube River, just an hour’s drive from Vienna, designed to power 1.4 million Austrian homes.

It’s also one of the most unique nuclear power plants in the world.

Why?

Because it’s the only fully-built nuclear power plant in existence that was NEVER SWITCHED ON.

And because, instead of being powered by nuclear fission, it’s powered by the sun!

Why was a fully-finished, $1.5 billion power plant, its fuel rods in place, never switched on? And what does a power plant built in the 70s have to do with solar energy?

And most importantly, what do you do with a fully-functional nuclear power plant that you can’t turn on.

This is a fascinating story that has as much to do with politics as it does engineering.

I’m Ricky at Two Bit da Vinci, join me as we figure this out together!

The Swentendorf power plant

So it’s the early 70s and the Austrian government is hopping on the nuclear power bandwagon.

• They plan for three power plants along the Danube River.
• The first one began construction in 1972.
• It’s located just outside the small rural town of Swentendorf, a mere 1-hour drive from the country’s capital, Vienna, which is quite important to the story. You’ll see why in a moment.

(source)

Let’s get into the specs:

• The plant is a Russian-designed Boiling Water Reactor (BWR).

• It’s the simplest type of nuclear power plant there is, and surprisingly similar to a coal-fired power plant
  • You’ll want to keep that in mind for later
• The operation is simple:
  • Uranium fuel rods undergo controlled fission in the reactor core, generating heat.
  • Normal water circulates through the core, absorbing heat and boiling into steam (that’s where the “boiling water” in the name comes from)
  • The high-pressure steam spins a turbine.
  • The turbine’s rotation drives a generator, producing electricity.
  • The used steam is run through a condenser cooled with water from the Danube River.
  • There it condensed back to water and returns to the core to repeat the cycle.
  • Simple.

(Image source)

[This is a nice animated GIF showing the process. You can use it as B-roll. You can also show some pictures of the actual reactor. You’ll find a bunch here]

• The Swentendorf power plant was designed to produce 700 MW of power.

How many homes does that translate to?

• The average Austrian household consumes about 4,415 kWh of electricity annually [source].
• That’s an average of 500 Watts per household.

• So the power could power 1.4 million Austrian homes today, and many more in 1972.
• That’s a lot for Austria:
  • Today, there are roughly 2 million people living in Vienna’s larger metropolitan area [source}.

(Image source)

• The average Austrian home houses 2.2 people
• That means about 900,000 homes in Vienna today and 732,000 back in 1972.
• So this plant could single-handedly be powering the capital’s entire population, and then some.
• That would have been pretty useful today, considering Austria and much of Europe are going through a severe energy crisis, but more on that later.

[show screenshots and clips from news outlets reporting on Austria’s energy crisis]

Why didn’t they turn on the Swentendorf power plant?

So, this begs the question:

What happened?

Why was the power plant never turned on?

• Did they run out of money in Austria like they did in Spain when building the Sombras Nuclear Power Plant?
  • No. Austria was doing great at the time with a GDP per Capita similar to other European countries like Germany and France, and it was doing a lot better than Spain.

(Image source)

• Was it because of cost overruns like the unfinished Bellefonte Nuclear Plant [source] here in the United States?
  • No. A typical BWR power plant costs $5,500–$8,100 per kW [source].
  • The Swentendorf could have easily cost $3.85–$5.67 billion.
  • At $1.5 billion dollars, it was quite cheap to build.
• Did they run into technical problems by the end, like the failed Superphénix nuclear power plant at Creys-Malville in France?
  • No!

The truth is the power plant was completed, fuel rods and all, in 1976.

Everything was in working order.

All they had to do was switch it on.

The reason was mostly political.

There was a lot of pushback against nuclear power in much of the world in the 70s, especially in Europe.

(Image source)

[Show clips from different documentaries like this one and this one]

• Opponents of nuclear energy:
  • Didn’t want to deal with the long-term commitment to nuclear waste disposal.
  • They demanded a solution to the disposal problem before starting up Zwentendorf.
  • They also didn’t want to depend so much on Russia, as most of the Uranium would have to be imported from there.
  • The general public was also scared about the potential of a nuclear meltdown.

• Instead of facing possible backlash from the public, Chancellor Bruno Kreisky preferred to ask the people.
• They held a referendum in 1978.
• The referendum asked voters if they approved a law that would permit the peaceful use of nuclear power, specifically the start-up of Zwentendorf.
• He never imagined what would happen next.
• The option “Against” nuclear power won by a mere 30,000 votes and less than 1%.

(Image source)

• Ironically, the most populous states near and around Swenterdorf, including Vienna, voted in favor.
• They would have been the ones in more imminent danger.

• So, nuclear power was baned by law from Austria
• The problem was that the Zwentendorf Nuclear Power Plant was already built!

What happened to Swentendorf?

What do you do with a fully-functional power plant you can’t turn on?

My first thought was, a lot of people must have lost a lot of money here, so they must be dying to get it back somehow.

• It’s $1.5 billion of equipment just sitting there.
• You can’t just sell it to someone else, pack it up, and ship it out.

So who lost the money?

The original builders were a consortium of private Austrian energy companies lead by:

• Verbund AG
• TIWAG
• EVN
• And several smaller regional energy providers

They’re not major companies in the global market, but they’re pretty big in the local market.

• Those companies thought they’d just wait it out and that the Austrian government would come around eventually in a few years.
• That never happened.
• Especially not after Chernobyl
• In 1989 they decided to sell the power plant for spare parts, but no one was buying.
• 99% of the equipment is still there.

This is where things take a strange turn:

• EVN bought the power plant in 2005
• Remember, EVN was one of the companies that built the plant.
• Instead of selling it to cut their losses, they bought the rest of the shares from the other companies.
• Which That doesn’t make any sense to me.
• I tried to figure out how much they paid but I couldn’t find it.
• It must have been very little anyway.

But why did they EVN buy it?

Don’t you think it’s a little weird?

• When you think about it, it’s not that far-fetched.
• First, it’s an important part of Austrian history and of the history of nuclear energy in general.
• Second, EVN had a bunch of clever ideas to repurpose the power plant and generate revenue from it, even electricity, but not how you think.

Remember how I said that boiling water reactors are similar to coal-fired thermal power plants?

• Swentendorf can easily be reconfigured to work as a coal-fired or bio-mass-fired thermal power plant.
• But that’s for the future.
• What about now?

Today, EVN uses Swentendorf as a training center for nuclear engineers.

• It’s also a training ground for disaster training.
• Remember, it’s the only full-blown nuclear power plant in the world that’s completely new and has never been used.
• It’s literally a life-size model prime for training in a real-world scenario.
• For example, in 2025 it’ll be the site for the 5th ENRICH European Robotics Hackathon.
  • That’s a competition where robotic engineers can test emergency response robots designed for nuclear disasters in a real power plant.
  • To do that somewhere else would mean shutting down a working power plant or using an unfinished or decommissioned one.
  • Swentendorf is as close as it can get to the real thing.

But they’re scraping every cent they can from other ideas.

They offer it as a filming location for movies and photo shoots.

Some of the movies that have already been filmed here include:

• Restrisiko, which is, ironically, a movie about a public referendum against a nuclear power plant in Germany. (Trailer)
• Grand Central (link to trailer where the power plant shows up)
• Tag der Wahrheit (translates to Day of Truth) (Link to trailer)
• And a more recent movie called Hacking at Leaves, which is a bit of an oddball, but still…

They frequently lease the space as a concert venue:

• A band called Sickmode just had a concert there a few days ago.
• Sefa performed there in 2022
• There was a famous Shutdown Festival in 2019, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Since 2010, EVN turned the power plant into a museum and you can take guided tours.

• They’re very popular and you have to make reservations like 6 months ahead.

But most importantly, the site was repurposed as a solar power plant and photovoltaic research facility in 2009.

• They installed around 1,300 solar panels that generated about 200 kWp of 100% renewable electricity.
• They sold those panels to the public in 2012 and expanded the site.
• The expanded photovoltaic facility Zwentendorf is today made of about 2,300 solar panels generating around 450 kWp of solar power for households and the regional industry.

[Show pictures of the solar panels next to the nuclear power plant]

• This site applies numerous technical principles ranging from a rooftop facility and side wall systems to an open-space solar park on the grounds of the power plant.
• It includes fixed, supported solar generators and sun-tracking solar systems that produce up to 25 % more electricity than the former.
• EVN operates the first expansion stage in cooperation with the Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien) as the Photovoltaic Research Centre Zwentendorf.

If you think about it, it makes a lot of sense to repurpose Swentendorf as a solar PV power plant.

It’s already got all the hardware and transmission lines to connect to the Austrian power grid for when it was supposed to deliver baseload power

So it’s a clever and forward-looking way to manage what otherwise would be a waste of money.

They’re also very open-minded about it all:

• They’ll take suggestions of what they could do with the power plant.
• If you have something in mind, just shoot them an email.
• I’ll leave the address in the description below. (akw@zwentendorf.com)

What about power for Austria?

So that’s the story about the Swentendorf power plant, but there’s a piece of the puzzle missing.

I mean, aren’t you wondering what the Austrians did for power when they turned down nuclear energy?

• I was asking myself that very question.
• You’d think they just shifted to renewable power
• But it’s the 1970s. Solar and wind aren’t a thing yet.
• And building out more hydro takes years.

So, what did they do for power?

They built this power station:

• The Dürnrohr Power Station
• It’s a two-generator black-coal-fired thermal power plant generating a combined 757 MW of electricity

• I think it’s a bit ironic that they’d prefer coal to nuclear energy. Even today 72 % of Austrians are still against nuclear power, even in light of the current energy crisis [source]
• The worst part is that they’re surrounded by neighboring countries that all have large nuclear plants near the border.
• And Austria’s dependence on Russian energy is worse than it ever was.
• Their reliance on Russian gas increased to 98% after the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022 [source].
• And gas and electricity prices went through the roof [source]

(Image source)

In my humble opinion, the consequences of not powering Zwentendorf have been worse than Austrian’s fears of nuclear energy.

But that’s just my opinion.

I want to know what you guys think

Leave a comment below.