As Austrian it's a national pride, and certainly not ironic.
Germany only followed after their Wackersdorf debacle, matching Tschnernobyl, and then finally Fukushima.
The rest of Europe is still in the hands of the energy lobbies.
And Austria does not rely on nuclear at all. It's rather the other way round, that all the others rely on Austria (and Swiss) expensive peak energy from their high mountains. When Europe turns on all it's power switches at the very same time the grid would collapse without Austria.
In 2023, 12% of Austria's electricity had a nuclear origin [0]. As for the risk of a meltdown, look at a map of reactors in Europe. The reactors Austria is buying that power from aren't much further away from major population centres than Zwentendorf.
Austria does not rely on nuclear at all. The biggest power station in the country (south of Graz) went off grid a few year ago, because gas and coal became too expensive, but could be turned on immediately.
Zwentendorf of the very same size cannot be turned on again fortunately. The meltdown and earthquake risk with all the insecure Russian reactors around is of course still around.
I have a friend who works on the Czech grid (so a neighboring country), and Austria never came up in the conversation as an important factor, it's always Germany causing problems.
That's how it sponsored Putin's war for decades, by being reliant on Russian oil and gas. Austria is still doing that, until maybe Ukraine closes down or blows up the pipeline.
> With the exception of Hungary, which has recently signed an agreement with Rosatom for the expansion of its Paks nuclear power plant, European countries have been seeking to diversify away from the company since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Germany only followed after their Wackersdorf debacle, matching Tschnernobyl, and then finally Fukushima.
The rest of Europe is still in the hands of the energy lobbies.
And Austria does not rely on nuclear at all. It's rather the other way round, that all the others rely on Austria (and Swiss) expensive peak energy from their high mountains. When Europe turns on all it's power switches at the very same time the grid would collapse without Austria.