Watch Modern Times Wonders - Kaprun Dam, Austria

Kaprun Valley is not only famous for its splendid natural scenery where one can relax in peaceful surroundings, it is also famous for its technical achievements. For at a height of sixteen hundred metres and within the near impenetrable mountain world of the Grossglockner, engineers created what is both a technical and architectural masterpiece, the Tauern Power Plant. Up until 1945 more than ten thousand forced labourers worked on what was then a massive building site, but it was not until some years later that the plant began to operate. Supplied by two dams, the Mooser-Sperre and the Drossensperre, water from the Pasterze Glacier is stored in the eighty five million cubic metre Mooserboden Water Reservoir. Over the years the capacity of the power plant has been further increased and optimised. The plant's present capacity of three hundred and thirty megawatts will, with the inauguration of a new plant, be increased to four hundred and eighty megawatts and will provide no less than ten percent of Austria's total electricity requirement. With the construction of this remarkable power plant, Kaprun Valley at the foot of the Grossglockner has been greatly enriched due to what is truly a modern architectural wonder!