The entanglement of physical research with government, politics and industry as well as the public negotiation of science, reached a qualitative new dimension during the Cold War. To draw a “big picture”, which includes all aspects of this process in its entirety without reducing its complexity, is only possible with a clearly defined analytical item. Therefore an exemplary investigation of nuclear research in Austria during the second half of the 20th century will be conducted in form of an analysis, which equally traces the historic development of the discipline as well as its social, cultural and political background.

As a small politically neutral state in the Cold War, the characteristics of this process are significantly more pronounced in Austria than other countries. First, the interdependence of national research programs with transnational organizations as the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is based in Vienna, second, new research concepts beyond academic laboratory science, which lead to new interaction examples between government, science, industry and society and third, major technologies that have been subject to new social evaluation criteria up to now. These emerging structures can be traced in the defined framework of Austria in a detailed manner, ranging up to the establishment of a national nuclear energy program.

As John Krige pointed out, a transnational network with the United States as a hegemonic junction was dominant at the beginning of the Cold War, but the smaller inner European networks experienced an upward revaluation in comparison to the transatlantic networks within the scope of the construction of Austria’s first nuclear plant at the end of the 1960s. The completed nuclear plant in Zwentendorf however, never became operational due to a public vote in 1978. All further nuclear energy projects were frozen. Today, Zwentendorf is still a central place of remembrance of the Austrian ecology movement.

In order to draw an integrated picture however, the Austrian development cannot stand alone. In a conclusive comparison with Danish and the West-German nuclear energy programs the analysis will be re-contextualized within the European framework and gives a clearer picture of the different nuclear energy polices of the national states, which also helps to understand the current situation of nuclear energy today.