Zwentendorf's 30 years

The following text in this area is excerpted from Ernst Branstetter and Georg Rigele .

30 years after Austria's only atomic power plant was shut down, the EVN guards this valuable power plant site as an option for the future. Just behind the Danube Treppelweg where cyclists can fortify themselves at the Baerndorfer Huette inn with beer, sausages or schnitzel, Lerni has its area: The mixed-breed dog-supposedly Border Collie and hunting hound-has sniffed out a rabbit in the high grass and is happily pursuing it. Along the drive into the area, then around the corner to the garage buildings where, on the asphalted surface, across from a reinforced door, a motor home is undergoing small repairs. But the rabbit leaves in a cloud of dust, and quiet reigns again on the site, where Chief Technician Johann Fleischer and his Lerni hold the post until 4 o'clock in the afternoon, for the most part alone.

Fleischer is Austria's only (and also often alone) operator of an atomic power plant, the Zwentendorf atomic power plant, which is the only in the world which, although completed, may never go into operation; he is always happy when the occasion presents itself to show guests "his" power plant. Over the years they have made a training reactor from the empty facility, which had only served as a spare parts source for similarly constructed German power plants. It is above all used by the German power plant school in Essen.

Today no one is here who needs to be trained, but then the giant steel doors, which look like doors to a treasury vault. "The building needs air," said Fleischer. Since the enormous building is not heated in the winter, the temperatures behind the steel-reinforced concrete walls falls-walls which could withstand a plane crash-to about 11 deg. C, and with the start of the warm season, condensed water falls on all equipment and floors. Fleischer has therefore set up large fans inside the buildings which circulate air through the empty entryways and dark halls, in order to protect the equipment from corrosion.

In some places, the power plant is still operating, as if the original 200 trained atomic power plant technicians who were supposed to have been operating it would be back tomorrow in order to run the reactor. The drive control room below the reactor core (6.5 m in diameter, 20 m high) is a symphony of stainless steel parts and electric drives, fuel dry storage, where the initial fuel was prepared in 1978, the storage tanks above the reactor, whose 60-tonne dome appears to be ready, just waiting them to screw it back in place to take the 270-deg C steam with 80 bar of pressure, which should be driving four power plant turbines. Under the reactor is the condensation chamber, a cathedral in black, where the safety water would be kept for any emergency cooling. Pump connections, tower-high steel pipes, which should serve for steam condensation-the entire equipment which one would normally not be able to see in a normal reactor-lies open and for the most part can be approached over gratings.

"The power plant is often reserved for training," said EVN spokesman Stefan Zach, who accompanied the tour. When there are renovations made in the German sister power plants, or service measures are undertaken for testing, the technicians come to Zwentendorf. Only if everything works here, the TueV also allows the reconstruction in the power plants which are in operation-and they have well-known names, including Wuergassen, Brunsbuettel or Philippsburg.

These have already delivered most of their work. The Brunsbuettel power plant, for example, entered into the grid in 1977, and is therefore only one year older than Zwentendorf. To date, it has generated about 130,000 gigawatt-hours of electricity and should, according to the current German atomic power consensus, be shut down in 2009. This amount of energy is about double the total current power production of a year in Austria and today represents a value of ?9.1 billion, if one uses the current market price for basic load.