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CNN World Report

Austrians Protest Construction of Nuclear Plant in Czech Republic

Aired July 08, 2001 - 14:02   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ASIEH NAMDAR, CNN ANCHOR: We begin in Europe, where tensions between Austria and the Czech Republic are building over a controversial nuclear power plant. The plant began operating just across the border in Temelin last October, but it has been plagued with a series of problems. Austria's ORF reports on how the plant has strained relations between the citizens and governments of the neighboring countries.

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JORK WINZER (ph), ORF CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Blocking border stations to the Czech Republic repeatedly, thousands of Austrians protested for months against the nuclear power plant just 40 miles across. The Czech reactor at Temelin has been built according to Soviet design during the Communist era. It has been completed last year.

Its safety standards have been improved by the American company Westinghouse, grafting the Soviet design with Western technology. Many technical problems resulted in repeated shutdowns of the station during its recent trial run. This is seen by the Austrian opponents of the plant as proof that the hybrid of Soviet and Western technology in Temelin just cannot work.

This view of the critics is heavily opposed by the Czech government. They say Temelin is perfectly safe. The nuclear dispute has already damaged diplomatic relations between the two countries. In case Temelin goes into operation, the Austrian far-rightist politician Joerg Haider and his Freedom Party are openly threatening to veto the Czech's pending entry into the European Union.

The recent opinion polls suggest that the majority of the Austrian population would support such a drastic step. Nuclear power has been a sensitive issue in Austria for more than two decades. In 1978, a majority of Austrians decided in a referendum that the just- completed only nuclear plant of the country in Zwentendorf never should operate. The plant has remained a useless multi million-dollar curiosity ever since.

Eight years later, the Austrian public was traumatized when a nuclear reactor exploded in Chernobyl in the Ukraine. This worst nuclear accident so far, although more than 1,000 kilometers away, caused a massive radioactive fallout in Austria, contaminating soil and water. Fears in Austria grew that a similar accident could happen in one of the Soviet-built nuclear plants just across the border in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Slovenia.

Experts from the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Organization admit that security standards in these plants are lower than in their Western counterparts. Even so, they regard Austrians as overly sensitive.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The reactors that surround Austria in Eastern Europe, Eastern and Central Europe here are not of a Chernobyl design. These are pressurized water reactors of Russian design, have been operating for decades without any problem, no serious accident. And so, that gives reasonable confidence.

WINZER (ph): For a rich country like Austria, with its substantial resources of hydro-electricity, it has been easy to denounce nuclear power, experts say. But for its poorer neighbors, it is not -- an argument that cannot convince Austria's anti-nuclear protesters. They maintain that Czech reactor at Temelin is a dangerous piece of (UNINTELLIGIBLE), and should never operate.

Jork Winzer (ph), with ORF, for the CNN WORLD REPORT.

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