Zwentendorf on the Danube, a quiet village perched beside the river, about fifty kilometers west of Vienna. There, since 1978, rises one of Europe’s most absurd industrial feats: a nuclear power plant completed to 100%, loaded with fuel, ready to begin operations, yet never producing a single kilowatt-hour. A popular vote, a margin of only a few thousand votes, and an entire country continues to foot the bill. The tale deserves to be told in full detail.
Key Takeaways
- A popular vote with only a few thousand votes’ difference was enough to paralyze a colossal project forever
- Austria continues to bear a dizzying bill for a facility that never operated
- This monument of industrial absurdity has become a cinema backdrop and a storehouse of spare parts
A titanic project scuttled by the ballot boxes
It all began in April 1972. Work started under a consortium of Austrian electricity companies, featuring a boiling-water reactor with an electrical output of 730 megawatts, designed by the German giant Siemens. Austria aimed to follow its European neighbors into the nuclear venture, and Zwentendorf was to be the first stone in an ambitious program. It was intended to inaugurate a series of power plants that would supply electricity to six million Austrian homes.
Five years of construction later, the result stood before them: a monolithic building, a 110-meter ventilation stack, and a brand-new reactor. The project called for a 730‑MW boiling-water reactor, with construction beginning in 1972 and planned for completion in 1977. Yet the then-chancellor Bruno Kreisky chose to decide the plant’s fate through a referendum once the work was finished. A risky gamble that would soon degenerate into a political fiasco.
On November 5, 1978, the Austrian people cast their vote. Even though the plant was complete and had already cost 5.2 billion schillings, or about 1.3 billion euros, Austrians voted against commissioning it by a razor-thin margin of 50.5%. A margin of mere thousands of ballots enough to bury a colossal industrial project. The political sanction quickly hardened into a legal lock: following the referendum, Parliament enacted in 1978 a law prohibiting the use of nuclear energy, the Atomsperrgesetz.
The clause would not stay merely anecdotal. After the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, the weight of this law was reinforced in 1999 with the “Law for an Austria without Nuclear Energy,” incorporated into the country’s Constitution. Since then, opposing nuclear power is no longer a mere political stance in Vienna; it is a constitutional principle, on par with fundamental freedoms.
The bill: between 380 million and 1.4 billion euros according to estimates
How much did this phantom plant cost Austrian taxpayers? The figures vary slightly, not surprising for a sum from more than four decades ago, converted from schillings. The initial price tag was about 5.2 billion Austrian schillings, roughly equivalent to 1.4 billion euros when adjusted for inflation. Other estimates, closer to a direct conversion without adjustment, place the figure around 380 million euros for the era. Whatever number one holds, one thing is clear: it was the Austrian public, through taxes and electricity bills, that financed a largely silent industrial instrument. And the most frustrating part is that the money didn’t simply vanish into thin air, as we’ll see next.
A reservoir of spare parts and a cinema set
Rather than demolish a brand-new building, Austria chose a pragmatic, almost ironic solution: recycle what could be saved. Since the law’s adoption, Zwentendorf has been partially dismantled and the site has served as a stockroom for spare parts for other compatible reactors in Germany. Boiling-water reactors of similar design on the other side of the Rhine were thus able to draw from Zwentendorf’s inventories for years. After the referendum, parts of the plant were taken apart and certain spare components were shipped to three similar reactors in Germany.
The site found other unexpected uses as well. It has hosted film productions and served as a training ground for security procedures. French cinema even took advantage of the location: it notably served as a shooting backdrop for Grand Central by Rebecca Zlotowski, featuring Tahar Rahim and Léa Seydoux in the leading roles. The place offers a rare advantage: you can tour the interior of a nuclear reactor without any radiological risk, since it never operated. Visitors can view the whole installation, including the upper interior of the reactor core, which remains safe because it was never put into service.
From a stillborn reactor to a solar park
The most recent chapter of this saga is perhaps the most symbolic. In 2005, the electricity producer EVN acquired the site with plans to repurpose it as a solar power facility. The plan came to fruition: photovoltaic panels were installed on the rooftops of the complex, transforming a symbol of atomic power into a showcase for renewables. A solar installation was eventually built on the site beginning in 2009.
A nearby thermal power plant was also established to compensate for the reactor’s never-delivered output. The Dürnrohr plant was erected nearby as a replacement thermal facility. Zwentendorf remains open to the public, but only by guided tours, and continues to host training for technicians from other countries. Half a century after its failed inauguration, Austria’s most expensive plant ever built finally produces electricity, but the power comes from the sun, not from the atom.
Sources: large.stanford.edu | lenergeek.com | sortirdunucleaire.org
