This billion-euro nuclear reactor was never switched on
Вставка
- Опубліковано 17 січ 2025
- Zwentendorf Nuclear Power Plant, in Austria, was ready to go: it just needed starting up. But that never happened, and forty years later, it still sits mothballed. Here's why.
Thanks to all the EVN team: you can find information on tours (in German) here: www.zwentendorf... - and about EVN here: www.evn.at/EVN...
Camera by Matt Gray: / mattgrayyes
Edited by Michelle Martin: / @onthecrux
🟥 MORE FROM TOM: www.tomscott.com/
(you can find contact details and social links there too)
📰 WEEKLY NEWSLETTER with good stuff from the rest of the internet: www.tomscott.c...
❓ LATERAL, free weekly podcast: lateralcast.com/ / lateralcast
➕ TOM SCOTT PLUS: / tomscottplus
👥 THE TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES: / techdif
Thanks to everyone who suggested Zwentendorf to me over the years! Given recent news, if anyone has suggestions for places in rural Britain that I can drive to and that won't need me to interview anyone in-person, do let me know...
Nice!
Tom Scott I would like to say my home City Hull, but it is incredibly boring and dull despite city of culture 2017
Ah. Never disappointed.
Video released now. Comment 19 hours ago.
Sellafield is always fun. You can go to the train station and do it all from there.
Alternatively, further inland Cumbria has its mountains carved that were by a glacier
Would love to see some vid from a trusted source on sickness and death each year and whether this thing is really a Pandemic or just media revenue raising.
I really respect this channel for letting the people they interview talk. They don't cut in, they don't talk over them. It's so rare
It's a breath of fresh air honestly. Journalism can now learn a thing or two off this interview.
I hate it, I wish Tom would argue or at least insult them a little bit 🤷🏼♂️
@@james5637 or break their phone as a prank, or make sexual insinuations or maybe just provoke them a little. If there's no drama I won't be entertained
Toms a different breed of person.
@@KidneyFailureGaming kinda funny how one youtuber is being more professional than some high-end newscasters.
"the powerplant didn't split any atoms but people families and political parties" damn.
How many watts is that
@@randomuser5443 funny af
yea that event and some other minor events resulted in the founding of the party "die grünen" that puts high priority towards ecology and climate change and is now part of the government in coalition with another party
@@unownunown1530 The UK also has a Green party, they rarely get any seats in parliament because they go a bit far with their 'ideals'. It's one thing to want to help the environment but it's another thing to want to abolish aircraft and make everyone live on vegetables.
Interestingly the whole political spectrum of Austria from the far left to the far right is united in one thing today: They don't want nuclear power.
Nevertheless the recurring technical issues of nuclear power plants in surrounding countries are a continuing worry to Austrians.
Other UA-camrs = Read Wikipedia for five minutes to make a 20-minute video.
Tom Scott = Goes on location to another country to make a 5-minute video.
He's just a travel junkie you know
Goes on *location*
Uh, What about citation needed? That is literally reading a random article for 5 minutes or less and then making a 20 minute video, while admittingly being incredibly entertaining.
Markus Franz the selling point isn’t being informative necessarily though, it’s the personalities
And your point? BTW the NBA sucks butt
Opening it up as a filming location was a smart move. This situation sounds super convenient for anyone making movies that need to film scenes at a nuclear power plant.
wonder if they used it for the Chernobyl HBO series
@@MrSottho They used the decommissioned nuclear plant 'Ignalina" in Lithuania for the Chernobyl series. That is a soviet era RBMK reactor nearly identical to Chernobyl.
All the ambience of a real Nuclear facility with none of the cancer-causing nucleotides
They could theoretically film a movie about the Tohoku earthquake that caused the accident in Fukushima there, as it is the exact same reactor.
i bet i would also work for engine rooms or any other industrial environment. it might be a smaller location and in austria but i bet the fact that they don't have to shut down any operations to film there would be a huge upside.
Holding a vote AFTER you've done something is the most bureaucratic thing I've ever heard.
Par for the course with literally any government.
Only 1/3 was done. They wanted to build 3
Welcome to Austria :D
Safe nuclear power? Gazprom disapprove.
At least the EU has put an end to all this sort of bureaucracy. Phew!
Wait, I can rent a nuclear power plant to host my parties?!
They called it NUKE festival. It was great.
de_nuke
Only in Austria😂
Minimum Dorifto aye I love that map
They filmed Godzilla 2014? 2013? in there.
Sad short story: "For Sale: Fully-functional nuclear reactor. Never used. "
One careful owner...
But in reality, you buy it on ebay from a Ukrainian guy and it's actually the Chernobyl reactor.
For Sale:
Baby Shoes
Never Worn
For sale: RBMK-reactor. Not great, not terrible.
@@745morning i think that is the saddest 3 line i have ever read
A nuclear power plant with solar panels. Imagine an archaeologist finding this years in the future trying to explain the findings
Archaeologist: 'It appears they never turned it on, its a mystery!'
Probably a temple. It's always a temple.
They won't need to. They'll just think a single thought and then they'll know because the information will be downloaded into their brains via a brain-machine interface.
ikr!
@@liam3284 Haha. Clever.
In Austria we call such a case an "Austrian Solution" - We spend a big amount of money just to change our mind
And ideally none of the parties involved are satisfied with the resulting compromise.
Just wait till Brexit is over. We're going to steal your stereotype.
Others call it idiotic
That's not a good thing.
@@tonu529 We also call it: ois oasch
i don't think it'd be a Conspiracy Theory that oil companies would spend a boatload of money to suppress alternatives. they've been well documented doing the same in other countries like america and the uk.
Ohh they have? I didnt know that, could you point me to some things they have done?
Would love source?
Read merchants of doubt
@@daniellassander I don't remember it exactly so don't quote me on anything, but I remember reading that oil companies funded some enviormental activists to stop nuclear energy investments in California in the '70
You forget that the companies that produce power from fossil fuels were the same ones that wanted to build nuclear reactors
The Philippines also has a Nuclear Powerplant that never went online, even if its already 100% finished. It was built by Westinghouse and is named Bataan Nuclear Powerplant. Same with Austria, the Nuclear Powerplant has a significant place in the Philippine Political arena and Filipinos still has some kind of fear of what might happen. The supposed opening of the Nuclear Powerplant was in 1986, and 1986 was the year Chernobyl exploded and the year Philippines was thrown into a deep political turmoil, so yes, its still there standing, maintained, but not used.
That's intriguing , thank you for the info.
woah thanks for sharing!! i'm from the ph and i didn't know about this, it's an interesting topic that needs to be talked more about here
So stupid
@@strawberry_sekaisame
Same in Italy we run nuclear reactors for 6 years after Chernobyl all was close due to a referendum
"Let's build a nuclear power plant and ask later if we want it." Austria 100
I didn't know David Cameron used to be Austrian! Or at least his political advisor.
I also like that they were waiting on _the politicians_ to change their minds, not the public at large…
I'm from Austria and that's the most Austrian move Austria has ever pulled off
@@schwochsto1868 Thats what I said. oida!
To be fair to our mountainous neighbours, it was probably more like "let's build this thing and hop onto the new age. Whoops, people actually don't like that? Let's seal it once and for all by getting their approval. Wait. We didn't get approval??"
Literally Brexit. I agree, David.
I'll give you 3 toilet rolls and half a bag of pasta for it
add a hand sanitizer bottle and we might have a deal
@@hugebuffman3619 I can't give more than half
@@hoovyzepoot I see your toilet rolls, pasta and hand sanitizer and raise you a face mask!
You know, in 70 years on a sad and rainy day a child will scroll through these comments and never understand why your comment might be considered funny.
@@Malte_Wwwwhile they sit in an underground bunker with the last remnants of humanity
I am an Austrian and I am happy that you shared this strange story with the rest of the world
Where you alive when the vote happened?
Same. I actually visited the powerplant once. It was amazing.
Diisä Komäntaasekzion is jez a Tei' vo da Republik Östarääch.
@@BenjaminAster
Das war schwer zu lesen.
What's it like in Austria, I wanna go there some day
Seeing the insides of power plants, specifically the room with the computers and buttons, is both terrifying and oddly relaxing.
why terrifying?
._.
There are a number of other videos on this platform with people visiting similar derelict power plants.
As an Austrian, this power plant has a significant meaning to my country's political landscape and is still very much present in our collective consciousness. Cool to see it getting some attention from the English speaking UA-cam world.
Do people regret the vote?
the500mphtortoise assume not after the several nuclear disasters that occurred in the years that followed. Specifically Chernobyl in 1986 and Fukushima after the earthquake there.
@@hugo4086 well given the vote was in the 70s I'd imagine three mile island was the worst pr
@@the500mphtortoise Not at all. Our country is perfect for water power plants, which is the reason we have no real energy shortage.
But people even demonstrate against power generation from rivers because it "destroys the nature". Even with all of the very strict environment protection rules fulfilled. This country and its people can be very very strange.
@@julnu Yes, we have those strict rules exactly because people protested. And flowing-water power generation, if implemented poorly, definitely has the potential to destroy the natural environment.
You forgot to mention, that the Austrians had to build a *coal-fired* power plant 4km away to saturate the electricity needs when the referendum concluded. Ironically this power plant has produced more radiation than Zwentendorf ever would.
True enough. Coal is never just coal. Mixed up in coal are radioactive elements, mercury, lead, and other bad things that get spread all around the plant...
At least they can decomission it in a couple of yerars and simply move on with their lives.
@@Les_S537 is that where the radiation came from? From burning the coal itself?
There are no coal-fired power plants in austria any more.
@@Confucius_76 all coal is slightly radioactive. Burning it releases the radioactive contaminants into the atmosphere, ironically causing much more radiation hazard than a nuclear plant would.
Fun fact from someone from Austria: We still (on occasion) refer to a project that is very expensive/time consuming without getting much out of it as a "Zwentendorf-Projekt". ;)
Hawara des hea i des erste moi
@@eliaskrug8968 Is sicher a Frage der Generation ;)
@@TheSniperMAJOR jo oda der Umgebung
Habe nichts dazu gefunden (glaube ich)... worum geht es da?
Hör ich gerade das erste mal diesen Ausdruck 😅
Humanity’s rejection of Nuclear power was a massive mistake, and the environment has payed dearly for it as we continue to rely on fossil fuels for our electricity
Wait 20 years when all this turbine fiberglass and these solar panel pieces need changed with more non-recyclable parts. We're just making the problems change hands.
humanity made a big mistake not investing the resources - both time and money - that went into nuclear energy to further develop renewable resources. Imagine if we focused on that instead of nuclear energy - sure, electricity in the 70s and 80s wouldn't have felt that much like an endless resource, sure, technology might have developed slower due to the stronger limit on electricity. But we wouldn't be here right like a child hiding its trash under their bed thinking "In the future I'll now what to do with this" - now it's more or less to late, now we have to keep using nuclear energy until we completely got rid of oil and coal power plants but it's a deal with the devil. Underground Storage facilities are just ticking time bombs, humanity should have never split the atom.
@@N3rdZon3 we already know what to do with the waste, re-enrich it. Unfortunately politics and currency throws mud in the energy waters.
@@desolane900
Good news, after including those parts into carbon emission, nuclear power plant still beat windmill and others firm of renewable energy power plant by miles.
@@N3rdZon3 The problem is that you'd need a breakthrough that massively increased solar efficiency, not 10, 20 or 30 percent, they only last for a decade or so, contain toxic materials. Wind isn't much better, in terms of efficiency, it's better than solar, but takes up a lot of land, just like solar makes tons of noise, constantly kills birds... Storing the energy is also a problem... you'd need a backup generator anyway which would likely be ran on coal. By ignoring nuclear, we're doing the enviroment a disservice, the enviroment which you climate freaks claim to love so much yet ignore in favor of backwards policies to feed your brittle ego and the need to control.
Well, if Valve ever change their mind about allowing a Half Life movie, they've got half the sets right there.
Oh shoot that would be a perfect place
@@psun256 i thought they had already use it for the 2014 godzilla movie
Great, now they just need life sets :D
😂😂😂
Haha "half the set"
Tom: "It's not like you can just flat pack it and ship it over the border to somewhere that does want it"
IKEA: challenge accepted
And then they'll give it the name 'Kärnkraftverk'
Precisely what the new nuclear direction is running with...flat pack LFTR thorium reactors! Wow this whole post could go much further from here! thanks
I would hope that after 40+ years there are better/safer designs for a nuke plant. It's fun as an expensive museum. Consider it a sunk cost and write it off.
@@怠惰な耳の長いフクロウ that literally translates to Nuclear Power Plant, so, seems right to me 🤷♂️😁
What do I do with these spare nuclear rods...have I missed a step?
The Austrian employee in the video was extremely well spoken
That's probably because he's Austrian.
Despite the accent, especially the tourist guides, there are quite a lot of people who are at least grammatically able to speak nice English, here. Better than in Germany in my opinion. The vocabulary lacks sometimes when talking about a topic this person does not talk about very often. The typically German accent is disappearing looking at the people in the age of 30 and lower :)
@@_zerio_ The accent does hurt me though as an austrian xD
@@pasi123567 At least it's not a german accent, but an Austrian one. German accents, in english as well as in german (language), are truly the worst
Mario Zeller Is it because the Austrians are so much more willing to speak English? I always felt like the Germans did it begrudgingly but the Austrians were more than happy to.
This winter, there will be a bit of a rethink.
Hey, isn't this the guy who threw two drums and a cymbal off a cliff 10 years ago?
that video holds a special place in my heart
Doesn’t seem like anything to me?
@@frenchguitarguy1091 yes it's him
LastNickLeft really unnecessary Westworld reference
Avalonn watch his video on why you don’t wanna go viral
There's a damn music festival inside a nuclear power station?! How do I get tickets?!
Miguel_Booker It‘s called Shutdown festival, it‘s definitly worthwhile if you are into edm, or more specifically hardstyle and such
Probably only electro music and as a special guest the german band Kraftwerk
It's called Tomorrow Festival
@@hazgebu an awesome "live techno" band called brandt brauer frick filmed a music video at this place. definitely look it up. song is titled "masse"
And you don't even need to bring glow sticks!
Take note UA-camrs. What could’ve been a 12 min video of unnecessary rambling became a 5 min diamond. Learn it. Practice it. Apply it.
Edit: Thank you for likes guys. I realize that I need to take my advice too.
The Smart & The Dumb you should take your own advice too
If only YT algorithms could appreciate that as well...
@@maciejmanna9246 YT algorithm appreciates 10 min vids, because you can squeeze more ads into them.
Problem is people do it for the money, not the entertainment value
@@RobertHarr1son UA-cam threatens that commercially non viable content may be deleted without notice))
great vid! I visited the place recently. One of the people I was here with was my cousin's friend's friend, who is a nuclear physicist, so we were greatly entertained during the whole visit. The history behind the construction and referendum is really fascinating, and the design of the reactor itself was also really revolutionary at the time.
talk about a dumb idea lets make a power plants then never use it yay we blew a billion dollars on a plant that we built and do not care to use it🤣
You should really go to “Kerni’s Wasser-Wunderland” in Germany near the Dutch border. It’s also a new, never used reactor, only that they built a theme park inside of it. The cooling tower was turned into a giant chairoplane.
*its called eather Kernwasser Wunderland or Kernie's Familienpark
*Its more of an amusement park than a theme park
What’s a chairoplane?
@@cwmd7651 basically a swing ride that goes far higher than the normal swing rides
Isn't it called Wunderland Kalkar?
what a kickass location to make a concert. Like, "Oh hey mom, I'm going to a concert at the Zwentendorf Nuclear Power Plant, love you byeeee!!!"
every one knows it we lerned it in school.
there is a hardstyle festival every year called SHUTDOWN
I really liked Stefan. Calm, relaxing voice and very interesting points.
It's really sad how nuclear power still has such a stigma when it can be so safe and efficient. It would actually be plausible to get away from fossil fuels with it.
This type of reactor (a German AEG SWR 69) was crap, it lacked a lot of safety features which have gotten standard later. It also had a relatively thin vessel and the control rods were put inside from under the reactor which means they need external energy to work.
These reactors have been shut down in Germany after Fukushima instantly, while more modern types are still operated
@@simonm1447 and that is very old technology that was designed with slide rulers and calculators. Even with technology from the 50's the only catastrophic events have been due to a major natural disaster or gross human error.
No way to safely store the waste
@@AegisHyperon power plants they are designing now will not create nuclear waste. They use the uranium until it is no longer radioactive.
@@tylerbonser7686 human error is natural and should be expected.
As an engineer that is a cathedral
it is the one Cathedral in world wich u can visit and with visit i mean seeing also the interresting stuff not only the boring stuff
As an engineer that is what I call waste of effort and resources. If you built it, use it!
@@zolikoff A waste of effort and resources, just like a cathedral ;)
Praise the Omnissiah!
:-)
This is a solar powered nuclear power plant. I feel like there's a joke here somewhere
How do you make a Nuclear plant green? You green light it to use solar power.
Something from a South Park episode surely. Leave it to Garrison after his sex toy vehicle to create something like that.
The joke is on us for missing out on the most environmentally friendly power source based on irrational fears.
Upgraded from fission to fusion?
Nuclear is literally cleaner and less deadly than solar
Look, if Factorio taught me anything, it's that you either fill every spare tile you have with solar
Or go nuclear
Trying to get enough coal to fire 1.4k boilers is just a fool's errand.
What Factorio and every other game tought me... is that game developers don´t have a clue how solar works
@@matsv201 Why that?
@@ThunderWorkStudioAMGE
Solar in Factorio got a intermitance rating of less than 1.5. Real solar (non directing) is 6-10.
A solar panel is 60kW in Factorio. It got 24 panels. A lager commercial panel is about 0.3kW, that would be 7.2kW.
Also worth saying the panels are much smaller than they would be in real life. Granted, that is true for the other sources to.
Now a steam turbine in Factorio is 5.82MW. The smalest that exist is the russian nuclear barge on 70MW. Most Nuclear turbines is between 300 and 1600MW.
So there is 2 order of magnitude diffrance in the nuclear power , and like 1½ order of magnitude nuclear. But in diffrent direction.
Now.. think of just changing the indeterminacy of solar from 1,5 to 10, solar would be unplayable.
@@matsv201 OK makes sense
@@matsv201 Yes, it's a game. Realism is not required. This mod is also a thing: "RealisticPower" by Kenira
Here's an excerpt from the summary:
"Do you like solar panels, a lot? Is your inner physicist crying whenever you think about how ridiculously powerful vanilla solar panels are? Do you think power is too easy to get? This mod is for you!"
They balanced Factorio for being playable, but that doesn't mean it's unplayable if you rebalance it. It's just harder.
Fascinating, a little sad, but glad to see it got some use. Nuclear fission (if properly respected) is possibly the best way out of the climate crisis, as other sources currently cannot compete for raw power output. Hopefully this place, even though it is outdated, can continue to teach about how it all works and about how to respect it in a safe and controlled environment :)
Nuclear fusion is at this moment the best way out of climate and energy crisis.
@@magrigrigri I would agree, but Fusion is still decades away commercially. Fission is not perfect, but it's available 🙂
@@David_J_B I am a garbage and got confused between fusion and fission. You are right.
it isn't sad. In Austria we have many hydroelectric power stations. The only thin that is sad that our Minister of Energy turned on a coal-fired power station this year. In europe we have a massive energy crisis, but if they turn it on, we lose a very important event location. (yes, it actually is a event location) Every year, the Shutdown Festival uses Zwentendorf as location.
@@magrigrigri Fission chips.
'Get out of here, Stalker!'
Issue people with gas masks and laser guns and split them into teams to find 'artifacts'.
I would pay for that game.
YES
I'll just sit around a camp fire, playing my guitar, saying blyat every 30 seconds.
@@dciug/videos
> like Arnold
"Get to the reacta!"
Its all fun and games untill monolith shows up at power plant
Seh swa Die ding is goeie untill the anomaly kills everyone in the game
In the Philippines, we also have a mothballed nuclear power plant called the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant. It was a PWR constructed by Westinghouse in the late 70s by the Marcos regime and was finished in 1986 after years of problems with construction and overpricing. Marcos was then removed from power in February of that year, and the Chernobyl incident happened only a few months later, so the succeeding administration decided to mothball the power plant. Unfortunately, the government owed Westinghouse a huge debt and it was only paid off in 2007.
In recent years, the government is trying to see if the power plant can still be revived, with not much info on that so far. But for the meantime, it's a tourist attraction that they hold plant tours at.
I hope our government could rehabilitate BNPP and operate it accordingly to alleviate the high demand and relatively low supply of electricity. Unless it is proven to be inviable.
I still think that nuclear was and still will be the future upon the development of nuclear fusion. We may have a robust renewable sources of electricity throughout the archipelago (e.g. geothermal, solar, hydro, and wind) but such cannot supply the humongous demand of our nation.
Hope it was maintained well enough. I want cheap electricity as fast as possible.
Edit : just a curiosity. how are you guys dealing with the current human malware situation?
@@xXx_Oshino_xXx Human malware? Has Darjeeling been drinking weed insread of tea?
@@xXx_Oshino_xXx everyone also wanted to go back to their own provinces so there's traffic everywhere and all the public utility vehicles were packed like sardines inside and outside. We also have a Bird Flu appearance as well for some reason...
Yes, i want tom scott visit my country!
To replace that one 750 megawatt nuclear plant with PV solar panels would require roughly 19 square kilometres of land area -- and every night it would produce zero megawatts.
"Luckily" this reactor was replaced with more coal burning at the time...
As you imply, it isn't actually feasible to use renewable energy to power everything (~18 TW). Even if you could "use 1% of the Sahara" to power the whole world with solar power, at the current world semiconductor production capacity (~19.57 million 200mm-diameter wafers/month), it would take 15100 years to produce enough solar panels (the continual increase of capacity should reduce this a _lot_, but I doubt it would be enough to accomplish this in less than a century). I really hope I've made an arithmetic error or we're all doomed by anti-nuclear idiots.
Hornsea One offshore wind farm is 1.2 gigawatt.
@@taumus1 Yet it produces less power than a 750 MW reactor would, it costs more, and the power is intermittent, you don't choose when to get it and when not to.
@@zolikoff Offshore wind is cheaper than nuclear by far. The video even states that as a reason why nuclear power plants are being decommissioned. Problems of intermittency are overstated. But just look at the trend today. Price is driving nuclear out.
Wow....so thrilling this combo of nuclear power and the 70s. That controlroom with their terminals...thrilling!!!!
I feel like Tom Scott is gonna be one of those people that just perpetually look 30
You alright bruh?
Damn those are some good shots. Looking up into the fuel rod casings and down into the cooling pool... and below.
Q: What do you do with a never used nuclear power plant?
A: Turn it on
One does not simply "turn on" a nuclear power plant. One activates it and carefully brings it up to power. Though I'm not particularly familiar with the reactor startup of a RBMK-type reactor.
Can’t do that anymore, it’s at least 20 years too late.
Pingo nuclear would be too green and efficient
@@user-is2zv4sc6y Out of curiosity... are you familiar with ANY type reactor start up?
@@user-is2zv4sc6y this is not an RBMK, it's a Siemens BWR
1 hour of content into 5 minutes.
You are truly doing God's work Tom!
Gosh, imagine a government calling a referendum on a controversial subject, losing the referendum and then having to implement the result. What were you thinking Austria, we in the UK would never do anything so silly...
One word. Brexit
They should have just ignored it. Utility companies aren't run by referendum.
It seems that the Austrian parliament is a lot nobler than the UK. Austrian pariament: "The people have spoken. We must implement their decision". UK parliament: "The people have spoken, but they are wrong and they must have been misled to make such a stupid decision. We will do all that we can to frustrate, delay and overturn the result..."
@@jasonanthony166
When do we get to have a referendum on Google censoring all these UA-cam creators?
@@gregorymalchuk272 Considering it is outlawed...
I wish people would stop hating on nuclear. It is so misguided.
There's always that chance of a devastating meltdown which in most cases causes massive amounts of damage so people won't risk it
Some politicians even call it "male supremacy" because reactors are supposedly "masculine". Environmentalists are an odd omelet of ideas. It is true that men tend to support nuclear but that is an odd reason to oppose it.
The thing is renewable energy is cheaper and wildly accessible. But what about the power spikes? It is still cheaper to build batteries and gas plants for the peak hours then it would be to build and run nuclear or coal power plants.
@Sassy The Sasquatch The only reason to hate on fusion is that it currently doesn't exist viably - but you put the N-word (not that one) in front of anything and it's a boogeyman. MRI scanners are not called "Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging" because the second you attach that word to anything it scares ill-informed people off.
432423429482
Doesn’t make any sense to me, I tend to base my political ideology on facts not feelings.
As it stands, nuclear fission is the both cleanest and safest method of generating base load.
@@idjles Damming projects without fail lead to ecological devastation both upstream and downstream of the site
Base load, peak load - 90% of people don't understand what fission or what a fusion are.
@@idjles apart from the other comment, you need to have specific geography and sizeable river.
@@Azerkeux Ecology is changed, and if we look at Caspian Sea, it definitely can be devastating. But.
Knowing how dams change area, can we not also use it for good?
@@idjles you need energy to pump, so it's not a generator, it's a very big battery.
It's definitely a bit unfortunate how the story behind the plant turned out, but it's really cool to see that they're making the most out of the unique circumstances.
a six word story:
for sale
nuclear plant
never used
-Earnest Hemingway probably
In Kalkar, Germany, they made an amusement park out of an unused nuclear power plant.
they also made parks out of concentration camps, same as Poland)
That would be funny if it weren't so sad.
In sweden they rebuilt an unused nuclear power plant (Marviken/R4) into an oil-fired power station
@@justicewarrior9187 intresting. its funny since we have the lowest crimerate in 25 years... but keep sipping the brown aid, friend...
Nuclear Energy didn’t make much sense anymore in Germany after they cancelled the „Fast Breeding Reactor“ in Kalkar and the Reprocessing Plant in Wackersdorf (WAA). Germany didn’t have national means to reprocess the Uranium, which meant that we had to ship the rods to La Hague. Or throw away tons and tons of perfectly fine Uranium that could still have seen some use if reprocessed. - Ultimately nobody in Germany wanted to have a kind of Sellafield/Windmere or La Hague facilities in his backyard, and to this day there is no storage facility in Germany for high radioactive waste. (A lot of the waste is still above ground / on-site at the powerplants.
Imagine being a worker who put years of his working life into it, then it never got switched on. I'd be gutted 😭.
People may say "they still got paid" but in their hearts that had to be crushing
@@christopherbrewer4421 I agree
@@angelosemeraro3170 although I don’t think they got paid for building the second and third one.
We have that in all sorts of industries, this is nothing. The workers just move on to build something else and once in a while some of them will not be switched on.
At least it was preserved & put to other uses; for real sadness ask anyone who's worked on cancelled govt defence contracts where everything is mandated to be scrapped/destroyed.
Sting is doing communications work on the side for EVN Group. Sweet!
This video makes me kinda sad, thousands of engineers built something awesome, but nobody ever used it.
and it could also power up so many households, it just goes to show that you should never give power to people that aren't well informed about the matter at hand
@@MrSeal-oy3fu And nuclear waste is no problem inyour book?
@@blubb9004 Never said it wasnt a problem, ofc nuclear energy has it's down sides but it's safer than other forms of energy and who knows if we spend more time on research we could find a better way to deal with nuclear waste as well
@@blubb9004 waste is made really slowly. It’s a problem that has a solution. If you aren’t near a fault line or large coast it’s just very inefficient to not use nuclear energy.
@@blubb9004 if anything nucler power is one of the most safest thigs ever in some cases its safer in coal and solar
Austria: We wasted 1B euro because of a referenda...
UK: Hold my morning tea
lets ban the EU
Inb4 the Brexitears of the Brexiteers
@@cry0lite800 and then make it a museum
Except the reason that money wound up wasted was because of the traitorous EUrophile Fifth Column in Britain trying to overturn the result.
@Bapple
'We don't want to be ruled by unelected undemocratic tyrants' is a childish slogan.. apparently.
One argument against the conspiracy theory: When my country (Slovakia) was entering EU, Austria had special stipulations about our nuclear reactors as well (overhauling to new standards etc.),as one our power plants is near their border. So it is more probable it was environmental concerns (however much one believes in nuclear being a environmental problem, but thats a completely separate topic)
We were and and we are tought to fear those plants north of our border. It starts in school. We children drew our own conclusion: Those plants are such a mortal threat so lets bomb them with our jet fighters. Irrational and misguided fears but many Austrians never got to question them. But we will buy your electricity and thank you for helping to stabilize the power grid ;-)
We also have one in the Philippines. A nuclear power plant that was never turned on. It's called Bataan Nuclear Power Plant
This is a perfect arguement for better science education.
yes but nuclear bad chernobyl fukushima
super SaS nuclear isn’t bad at all nuclear power is great
If we had better science education then nobody would support nuclear power since everyone would both realize how much more dangerous and problematic it is than presented and how much of a non-solution it is to our actual problems (hint: we don't have nearly enough nuclear fuel for the entire planet to sustain more than a couple of years on it).
Tyranteon if you educated yourself more to learn about nuclear energy you would know about the next generation reactors that are being reopened. There isn’t another solution if we want to stop polluting the environment solar and wind won’t be able to power the world it isn’t feasible.
Tyranteon “more dangerous” do you know how many people have died from nuclear energy? No you don’t I will give you an idea....cough cough.... I present to you.... solar panel installation has killed more than nuclear powers lifetime.
Funny enough, Austrians take nuclear energy from Czechia's power plants.
and Germany, which phased out its nuclear power at the same time as it invested 500 billion into renewables (as such, only replacing the nuclear plants with the wind and solar, not actually displacing fossil fuels despite the immense investment!) regularly imports quite a bit of energy from France, which gets 60-70% of its electricity from nuclear.
Easier to look the other way when you are using nuclear power, but not producing it. Most people in Portugal are so misinformed that they don't know we buy a percentage of nuclear power from Spain and France. Nuclear is excellent for base load power.
Just wait till the Chinese sell you the Thorium power plant technology they got free from Americans.
Peter Lyczek Google THTR-300 and the many (often covered-up) failures of the predecessor (AVR) in Jülich.
Zhr problem is, that all Thorium-breeders need to have graphite-moderators in its core - which does make them as dangerous as the Chernobyl RBMK, because there can be a graphite-fire; which was the main reason why Chernobyl did spread much more radioactivity than Three Mile Island.
@@javi8714 molten salt thorium reactor does not used graphite. The working unit in Tennessee run none stop for 5,000 hours before it got shut down. There's only an empty building where it once stood.
When we’re on mandatory self-isolation, looking forward to the video on why the bathroom was never renovated and the story behind the mysterious switch in the living room.
One of the reasons that the referendum turned out this way is that the chancellor anounced that he would resign if the power plant does not go into operation, so people who were against the government voted against it, for political and not factual reasons.
of course. the same reactor operated in bavaria for decades, was just shut down some years back.
"We installed a solar power plant."
For a plant designed to supply over a million people with power that solar farm is a bit pathetic. Looks like enough for 20-30 people.
@ But solar power and wind power don't produce any waste (besides in the process of manufacturing the panels or windmills). Nuclear energy requires a supply of isotopes, and when those no longer put out enough power they get buried in a disposal site.
Neither of them are perfect, but I'm sure we can agree that they're miles better than coal-powered energy.
@@MoxieCat The waste can be used in newer generation plants as fuel. And also the isotopes in the waste are being used medically to treat cancer and stuff I don't know about in-depth.
Jaedon Braun: All of the fuel for a nuclear reactor comes from the ground, and when it is spent, it goes back to the ground 🤷♂️
@@981porsche3
Even when we start getting Uranium from ocean water we have plenty of massive mines that need to be filled in anyways, so why not kill two birds with one stone?
I am guessing the solar plant is to power the station as it is probably in the middle of nowhere
"Good news tax payers - the specially appointed government committee has concluded it's 4 year investigation and estimate we can make 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000126% of the cost back by using it as a filming location!"
Damn, this is incredible. I love stuff like this and getting to see the moment in time sort of capture. Stefan is also a fantastic orator and you can clearly see his passion for the project.
Good thing the Austrians did the smart thing and relied upon Russian oil and gas rather than harvest their own energy. I'm sure many people are going to have regrets about this.
That's so cool. I can use parts of this video to show my friends and family what my workplace looks like! Its similar enough to the plant I work at.
Shud I be concerned? how old is that Powerplant?
@@stekra3159 Addiditonal info: Fukushima is/was the same reactor type as the one in the video.. I guess there are a few more of this reactor generation around the world that are operational.
@@inveritae Fukushima Daiichi 1 is a GE plant, others are from Toshiba and Hitachi (GE license). AEG purchased a license from GE to develop their own plants, like Asea Atom did in Sweden.
I am from Austria and live 15 km(9,3 miles) away from this Power plant and I never visited it, but I will do so in the future.
I've already been inside, it's an absolutely incredible experience!
This video is really hilarious to watch as Austria's electricity prices are currently at 75c/kwh
That is because they want to destroy the economy and bring everything to collapse. The plan is called Great Reset.
"This power plant doesn't split atoms, but people, families, and political parties."
Nice.
Nice.
0:53 I thought the red button was to stop the reactor.. glad I dont work there
bruh
And that is why it is a training facility!
In the power industry red means it is operating, green means it is de-energized and thus safe to approach. Ass backward and confusing but that is how it is.
There's no "AZ-5"-switch in there.
I don't think anything would happen if you would press it at all.
It's not prepared, no cooling water and parts of the core are dismounted.
That’s why the Austrians never turned it on : they just kept pushing the red button... The referendum was just a cover-up 🤣
OMG a video about Austria! I had a tour in there, it's amazing.
Spending huge sums of money to build something, and then only after it's finished putting it to a vote, is one of the stupidest things I've ever heard.
building a powerplant, then AFTERWARDS asking the people if they want one, and then 50.5 percent say no....
And we Austrians are proud of it xDD
Before Americans laugh too much they should Google Shoreham nuclear power plant....
@@mtnbikeman85 Except for the fact there were legitimate evacuation concerns
I think they shoyld be proud they respected democracy
@@samdumaquis2033 I agree that Austria did well by respecting the result of the democratic vote. However, they did very very poor job by having the voting *after* building the damn thing.
50.5% and they respected the result.
Hmmmm.
And then, Soviets decided to build a nuclear power plant 70 km from the Austrian border...
Yep, Jaslovske Bohunice, 10 km from where i grew up
Temelin in Czech republic is only 50km away from Austrian border
@@MrNejcbo And believe me, we have a lot fun with that. Civil blockades on border shouting curse words to us and more, but it died out.
Which plant?
As sovietpuma mentioned, Jaslovské Bohunice, Slovakia. But also Temelín in Czech Republic.
When you buy a game but never launch it
I know that feeling oh so well! Damn you Steam sales and wishlists!
Most games are at least a bit cheaper than €1 billion, though, at least if there's a Steam sale.
@@seneca983 I've not checked the latest statistics, so forgive me if I'm wrong, but most games are cheaper than €1 billion even _without_ Steam sales.
Deus Ex Machina wait for a few years and ea is gonna prove you wrong on that one
Classic to have a big, shiny red button turn the entire facility on.
I just wanted to say thank you. You make awesome dedicated videos. And i spend really apreciate all the efford that goes into making them. They are one of the highest quality Videos i know on youtube and I hope you keep on with your way of doing things.
For a split second (at 2:31) I thought I heard Stefan say "Evian bought the nuclear power plant" and my mind went straight to Radium-water.
Radium maybe not, but *Radon* water (there's sometimes radon in alpine rock) is quite popular in parts of Austria. It astounds me that the valley I ski in is likely more radioactive than this nuclear power plant.
that is so cool, always wanted to do a guided tour in a nuclear power plant, as the whole topic is super fascinating to me. This looks like the perfect location for it, will keep it in mind.
cool ! nice to see you doing stuff in Austria! greetings from vienna "
The Austrian guy should make asmr
I don't know who is stupider: the people who vote against their own interests or the people who expect them not to.
Voting against the construction of a nuclear power plant next to where you live can't really be considered "against your own interest" there are VERY valid reasons to be wary of it.
@@lhumanoideerrantdesinterne8598 Such valid reasons as paranoia and being a sheep guided by oil companies
Austria is very blessed and has one of the highest amounts of renewable electricity in Europe. Whereas I don‘t particularily think nuclear power is bad, why should we use it if we can easily fulfil our needs with water?
@@GmbH2088 You say that like Chernobyl and Fukushima never happened.
@@baneudel nuclear power is the safest form of power wind and solar take a lot of space and a lot of money also nuclear power is way efficient even with 1 billion euros you wont be able to make the amount of power with renewable energy
Wow! That place looks amazing! I'd love to visit if the opportunity presents itself!
What a sad story also for environment. This case demonstrates perfectly why it makes no sense to ask public to make decisions in complex matters.
tehnocracy is better than democracy?
@@MrRendulic democracy is that more informed people selected by people make the calls.
@@juspetful it feels like only the popular people get elected and not the competent
@@juspetful thats tehnocracy or meritokracy
They still use nuclear power plants. Czech nuclear power plants, that is, every time winter or droughts make their rivers to weak too supply hydropower. Yet they constantly bash and berate the Czechs for having them.
BTW: Central European coal is relatively high in radioactive impurities. Burning it didn't help much. And how much does it cost yearly just to have it around?
Nuclear power is cleaner than how we produce electricity currently, it's only dangerous if it isn't taken care of properly, like the meltdown in Chernobyl.
And you really have the impression that governments and profit-oriented businesses are properly taking care? That's new to me.
Amazing quality of information as always Tom. I honestly believe your videos are capable of educating the average teenager in many aspects of life and educations the schools now miss. The kids today lack this very important "why" question, as robots to a system that trains them to pass exams.
Thank you. My 7-year-old granddaughter watches these with me, I stop it in several areas and as her, the "why" question and then play the remaining time left for her to see if she's right and has her logic button pressed!
glad we survived that. strAnGeee design.
GIven how much CO2 emission could have been avoided by running this station instead of burning fossil fuels, this is a tragic story.
Austria produces about 70% of its electrical energy consumption with hydropower, aprox. 90% of the electricity mix are from renewables, the rest ist bought in from other countries that mostly use nuclear power. So Austria has cleaner electricity production the Great Britain or the US for example
Ironically, they're buying their power from countries that make it using nuclear for everything that isn't hydro.
Talk about NIMBYism
@@sisosto Austria doesn't have any major production to power. They lived by leaching off of their neighbours for centuries.
@@laszu7137 Its not leaching of of anyone, we (Czechs) actually have more than we need, so why not sell it?
@@sisosto Other European countries are moving away from nuclear power. Germany does the same scam about renewables to the public. They have enough theoretical capacity to come close to meeting all demand but because of logistical limitations they actually import a large amount of power, which is largely from nuclear and fossil fuels. With the current shift, more will be from fossil fuels. The public believes they are getting greener but it is often the opposite case as nuclear power plants are closed down. Renewables only replace a fraction of the energy required, which means fossil fuels fill in the gap. Building more renewable energy is great but nuclear is still necessary for prime power production.
I'm expecting him to say "Get to da choppaah!" any second...
I find it crazy that in an age where we are reliant more and more on electricity, we are turning our backs on nuclear energy. Modern nuclear plants are safe, clean, and even their waste be be re-used. And of course they do not rely on the weather or the time of day. And when it comes to the environment, you only have to travel out into the countryside to see mess that wind and solar farms are making of the landscapes. I can't even imagine just how big a solar farm would have to be to produce the same amount of energy that even this old 750 megawatt would have produced. And of course the solar farm only produces electric during the day. Here in the UK we are banning the sale of any new petrol or diesel powered cars from 2030 onwards, along with banning the fitting of anymore gas central heating systems to homes. Our electricity usage is going to double over the next decade or two. So much more of our countryside is going to be ruined to meet the demand using solar and wind. The system is crazy, try building a small home in the middle of the countryside and you will be refused permission because your building will be a blight on the scenery. But energy firms are granted permission to build turbines over hundreds of acres of land, whilst covering another thousand or two acres with solar panels. We should be embracing nuclear power, not turning our backs on it.
Problem is when a nuclear power plant goes wrong. The more of them there are, the more of them there are that can break. Which part of England are you willing to cordoned off if there’s an issue for a couple of hundred years?
@@conors4430 there no such problem with nuclear power plant. There a thing called maintenance you coconut head.
@@conors4430 There's only one case of a NPP going wrong in the history of the world - and it was caused by extremely gross negligence on every step of the way. Look at France, they've been using nuclear for decades and had zero problems. Stop spreading lies about nuclear energy.
@@conors4430 Manchester
@@conors4430 Us frenchies haven't had so much as a scare due to nuclear in some 80 years of operating nuclear plants. But I suppose other countries aren't willing to repeat the same success, least of all the british.
In Sacramento the people voted to shut down a nuclear plant and the cancer rates dropped dramatically.
This whole building complex is so romantic.
Time is trapped within it.
I live near Zwentendorf and there is a rave party in the reactor building every year, can recommend!
Woast bei Camo & Krooked dabei? Des woa jo ah mega geil duat!
Modern nuclear technology is so advanced now, and so much safer I don't see why we don't use it. It offers a quick way to get off fossil fuels, and it'll be able to provide a constant source of energy when wind and solar can't.
"Constant source of energy"?
How? Do you really think Uranium is a renewable resource on earth?
Joe, we do not know if it is a “modern” nuclear plant. It is about 50 years old.
@@andreasegger4277 it's not renewable, but as far as I'm aware there's plenty of uranium to keep us going for thousands of years. I also know they can decommission nuclear weapons and use the fuel from them in modern types of nuclear reactors.
@@Jakob_DK what do you mean? 50 years old in nuclear power progression is a long time
Joe Cramp
I thought you called the 40 years old plant modern.
750 MWe of power that could offset milions of tonnes of coal each year. So much CO2 not released, air pollutants not released, toxic, slightly radioactive coal ash piles, not created. So sad, that people cannot comprehend the risks involved and risk calculation, especially for what they already have, like coal power plants...
I'd say it's laughable to shut down green energy like nuclear only to re-open coal power plants, but the reasoning is so messed up it's saddening
Tom, have you ever heard of the Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant in New York? Very similar story, except they operated at 10% power for one day, and then could never obtain a full power license. It was decommissioned and decontaminated in 1994, but has since stood abandoned, until recently when it has become a filming location.
This realy saddens me. As an engineer, and as a person of this world dying from pollution.
Most of the World has cleaner air and water than it has for 150 years. Only really China and India that don't.
@@realMaverickBuckley in SEA ,malaysia and singapore constantly suffered from indonesia who intensively burning forest where the land is mainly made up of coal...there must be a period the area containminated by air pollution. I am nt sure other country tho, but annual report said coal fired power plant killed thousand of people annually
In Soviet Pripriat, inhabitants sadden about you.
@@realMaverickBuckley the Amazon rainforest is being cleared out. By fire. Stop being in your own world.
By the way, CO2 is also pollution. It might not be poisonous, but the climate change it causes will destroy many farmlands and coastal cities. The economic cost will be astronomical.
@@bigsmall246 CO2 actually _is_ poisonous, just not at atmospheric concentration (which is very low, 0.041%)
There is one like this in Bataan in the Philippines, an American company charged the PI government billions to build it, but the company falsified the geological reports and built it on an earthquake fault line, it can never by used.
God bless America
Amazing site and amazing video! And congratulation for your storytelling!