[t312227]

imho (!) ...

nice articles ... but - there is always a but ;))

yes, part of it was the "anti-nuclear sentiment" ... but i would say, only a smaller part.

the "real" reason was internal austrian politics.

you have to know the background: during the 1970ties a left-leaning socialist government propelled the country into the future - implemented a large package of reforms -, after decades of societal backlash & stagnation following the 2nd world-war and at first only marginal influence of the late 60ties and early 70ties worldwide students protests etc.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruno_Kreisky

so after zwentendorf was build chancellor kreisky throw all of his popular weight behind it and did something remarkable (i would say: stupid): he said, if the popular vote ends against zwentendorf, he will resign => the liberal-conservative austrian peoples party saw the light to get rid of him and invested heavily into this ... the rest is history...

just my 0.02€

[oceanofsolaris]

Also interesting: Kreisky totally didn’t resign after the vote ended against Zwentendorf…so the whole thing was for nothing in the end.

The operator of the plant assumed that the politicians would get to their senses at some point and kept it in operational shape for some years even though it wasn’t producing any power. Then they went bankrupt because pretend-running a nuclear plant is expensive.

[rmu09]

Another thing IMO is that the government wasn't trusted to be completely honest about the dangers and the capability to run it proberly. Radioactivity is easy to detect and the mechanism of biological damage also is relatively easy to observe and prove (compared to other toxic substances emitted by e.g. chemical plants -- i.e. it took a very long time to get rid of leaded gasoline). People knew about the devastating effects radiation can have. Austria was a neutral buffer zone between east and west and a typical scenario of possible war the "Bundesheer" prepared for was NATO/soviet troups trying to bypass via austria (and the other block trying to stop them with tactical nukes).

[spacechild1]

> the liberal-conservative austrian peoples party saw the light to get rid of him

I didn't know this part of the story! Sounds very much like the ÖVP indeed...

[rjzzleep]

You throw in left-leaning socialist and liberal-conservative as if it's supposed to clarify the story. Both of those terms meant vastly different things from now 50 years ago.

Can you be a bit more precise with your 2 cents so we can actually understand what you're saying?

Social Democracy isn't "socialist left", but leaving that aside, what you're saying is that the social democrats of the time tried to create energy independence(opposite of today's social democrats by the way), that's smart. So the Austrian people's party invested into what exactly? What did they do?

I see that he was in the Willy Brandt camp who was famous for his Ostpolitik, interesting. I just learned through the links that while he was working on normalizing ties to the east, he worked at the same time on anticommunist policies, which is also interesting.

If I get what you're saying correctly then this reminds me of when the plan for Fiber optic development in Germany was sacked to create copper to indoctrinate people with cable TV. It was in the same time frame actually.

https://netzpolitik.org/2018/danke-helmut-kohl-kabelfernsehe...

[TomK32]

It was only in 1991 the Sozialistische Partei Österreichs changed it's name to Sozialdemokratische Partei Österreichs.

[radu_floricica]

He's probably suggesting it was an indirect political move in a power struggle, so we should not take it as gospel that Austrians chose to end nuclear. The way, for example, democrats postponed the covid vaccine for about a month to win the elections, or the republicans are currently helping russia.

(I'm just trying to explain the concept, I have absolutely no idea about Austrian politics. Other than the commonly known fact that they're currently not energy independent)

[cenamus]

Unfortunately, as if we didn't have the best facilities for pumped hydro storage in all of Europe. But the Russian gas money is just too sweet

[t312227]

hello,

ok ... lmgtfu ...

so lets go for the details - sadly most of it is in german

public vote on zwentendorf ~ where you can read the details i mentioned - and more:

* https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volksabstimmung_in_%C3%96sterr...

an overview about the reforms of the kreisky government during the 70ties

* http://kreisky100.at/meilensteine/index.html

or about the person "bruno kreisky"

* https://kontrast.at/bruno-kreisky-biografie/

very essential for the people were social and work related reforms, education (hertha firnberg) and women-politics (johanna dohnal)

ad johanna dohnal - a really remarkable person, on-off part of austrian governmental politics from the 70ties to the 90ties ... the english wikipedia page is sadly pretty empty:

* https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johanna_Dohnal

hertha firnberg - another remarkable women in the austrian politics of the 70ties: in short, she made the (higher) austrian educational system available to people w/o a lot (!) of money (higher education schools and universities, which where very elite prior to her reforms)

* https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hertha_Firnberg

the english wikipedia page about her is better than johanna dohnals, but the german version is still more extensive ...

ad parties:

the SPOe back in the 70ties was still a socialistic party - i think they already dropped the revolutionary aspect of socialism back then ...

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Democratic_Party_of_Aus...

the OeVP back then was a "very open to the right", bourgeoise - in its negative connotation - party whose primary "clientel" was - and still is - (very) religious people (christian-catholic), larger companies and rich people.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austrian_People%27s_Party

afaik. it was planned to get the powerplant zwentendorf into operation at a later stage in time, but the famous accident in tschernobyl killed off all those plans by the 2nd half of the 1980ties.

which finally led to the building of the powerplant "Duernrohr"

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%BCrnrohr_Power_Station

yet another 0.02€

[rjzzleep]

OK thank you for clarifying, that was very interesting. If the socialist party was renamed to social democrats almost 8 years after this person left office, then the way the Wikipedia article is written is literally rewriting history.

Just a point about the socialist label for the many Americans here. Willie Brandt worked hard on what was called social market economy, it is actually what gave rise to the successes of the German state in the past. While it is socialist, it is very far away from what the average American likes to call socialist. It was a hugely successful economic model, and the bit by bit destruction of that system is what gave rise to this dysfunctional rump state, which is the current Germany.

[rmu09]

I was under the impression that the concept of social market economy is a conservative project, CDU resp. ÖVP (in Austria). I wouldn't call that socialist, after all, it is a competitive market economy with private enterprise.

[petre]

Sounds like a David Cameron all in moment.