In an extended audio and video presentation that began with a Walt Disney movie produced in the nineteenfifties, Gernot Neuwirth traced the principal stages of constructing facilities throughout the world to exploit controlled nuclear reaction to generate electric energy.

The Disney movie was more than instructive; Mr. Neuwirth was able to demonstrate on the basis of the many startlingly distorted facts presented in the movie how misinformed were wide segments of the international community about the complex details of nuclear
electric energy production, its true costs and the inherent risks.

Already in the 70s various groups of Austrian students, scientists and activists were becoming increasingly uneasy about the rush to utilize this new source of energy. A series of grassroots political movements sprung up in Austria and they ultimately forced a federal referendum that denied the operation of a fully completed nuclear power plant — in spite of a carefully planned, well-funded and well-executed campaign by the ruling party of the government with Austria’s most successful post-war politician, Bruno Kreisky at its head.

Since this referendum, that took place even while the oil crisis of the 70s was still being felt, there has never been another attempt to construct an atomic power plant in Austria. Austria, in fact, has become internationally effective in discouraging the use of nuclear energy in the world.

Mr. Neuwirth also showed us, however, how Austrian activists have been unsuccessful in halting the production of nuclear power very close to Austria's borders with the Czech Republic and Slovakia.