Hero of Telemark

We popped back into town to do a bit of shopping. I bought a switch to replace the one on our LEDs that had already cost us £100. £5. F@*&ing ripoff merchants. I would strongly recommend the Danish army check their bills as they are also probably being stung for thousands extra. (Yes, I'm a little peeved still.) Anyway, there was this:

Vemork is famous for its heavy water plant. Heavy water, or Deuterium, is so called because it has two hydrogen atoms with extra neutrons which have mass but not charge so make the water heavier. It can be used in a nuclear reactor as a moderator because it soaks up _____. Vemork produced heavy water as a by-product of its nitrogen production, which was itself used in fertiliser. This was ground-breaking stuff between the wars but was also seen as a route to an atom bomb for Nazi Germany during the occupation. So the plant had to go. There was an abortive attack by British based commandoes where nearly everyone died. Then there was a successful raid by another smaller group, though production was soon restarted and in fact increased. Next there was a bombing raid caused more political damage than military (due to the many civilian casualties incurred), and then finally the entire heavy water stockpile was sunk in a ferry on the first leg of its journey to Germany. We bought a book on it which turns out to be by a New Zealand author. Go figure! Ian Brodie, Rjukan and the Heavy Water War . Those commandoes were fit bastards.

Vemork hydro-electric station

The gorge. The station has stolen all the water, except for once a year, when it is allowed to flow over the falls for a festival. The raiders had to cross this gorge.

An older station used to power the construction camp I think

 Across the valley there's still a nice waterfall

AEG and Oerlikon produced the generators. The latter also produce anti-aircraft guns used by both sides in WW2.

 Not the easiest access for a caravan: there was a complicated shuffle of cars to get them all through, including another car and trailer that had to back up a distance. And that was just getting down to the car-park.

The huge hydrogen plant used to be in front of the generator building but was blown-up in 1977, and not by commandoes.

Interesting visit but we had to move on, across a bit of tricky road. There were some villages (or ski-resorts?) on the way, with all their roofs covered in grass.

Getting a bit hobbitville-ish

Yet another marina for our stop.

We ran out of power again. I think it's the kettle, possibly because of the lime-scale? Annoying anyway. At least we have gas now. Or I do. Boom-boom.