“We then moved to the foothills of the Giant Mountains (Krkonoše), to Ústí near Stará Paka. Do you know Stará Paka? Have you been there? It is on the way to the Krkonoše Mountains. Ústí near Stará Paka is a small village, and there is a textile factory where my dad worked. They had a building for workers that was nicknamed barracks. It really looked like that. Our family lived there, my brother was then born and there were four of us living there in two rooms, which were not too big. There was a latrine in the hallway. We thus lived quite poorly. But other than that, the place was very nice, and I lead a countryside life there, so to speak. The kids there taught me various things, like being able to walk barefoot on a stubble-field. We were running over the stubble. And there were many forests in the region, and I was passionate about mushroom picking. I was going for mushrooms everyday, and I was even leaving the small mushrooms in their place and then coming to pick them up two days later and hoping that they meanwhile grew bigger.”
“I was already retired for short time, and problems occurred in Temelín. The first trouble began right in 1990, when the Temelín power plant was to be launched. Politicians meddled with it, they always do that when some large-scale technology is concerned; you can hear about it on TV all the time, the discussion whether to complete the construction of Temelín or not. There was even the deputy prime minister, and the minister of foreign affairs and they talked about Temelín here. Back then it was similar, but the point was that they actually wanted to establish cooperation with Russia. The turbines for Temelín were originally supposed to be 1000 MW turbines from Russia. Some high-ranking communists were secretly lobbying for this proposal. On the other hand, there were some more sensible communists, who warned that there would be nothing to do and that this would result in very high expenses and that we needed to design the turbines ourselves. We were thus inventing the turbines by ourselves. In order to symbolically mark this cooperation with the USSR, there was one thing: we accepted a licence for the turbines from them, which concerned regulatory valves. It was decided that we would not work on designing those valves, because the Russians operated 1000 MW turbines fitted with these valves and we would take them from the Russians. Of course, Russian licence was indeed taken for the nuclear reactors, and they were later produced in the Škoda factory, both for Temelín as well as for the other nuclear power plants. But in the 1990s there was a situation when the politicians and the public began to point out that the nuclear reactors in Temelín actually contained the Russian electronic systems and that they were allegedly obsolete and that we needed the electronic systems from the West, especially from America from the Westinghouse company. Talks with Westinghouse were thus initiated, Westinghouse then began supplying some parts, and all this began to drag on and on. The final stage of the construction took nearly ten years, until 2000. It almost seemed that nothing would come out of it and that the power plant would be sold to somebody, mainly to Germans, who would complete the construction and start its operation. That we would be allegedly not even capable of doing that. But then the socialist democratic government led by Zeman came to power and there was the deputy prime minister Grégr. This Grégr, who was at the same time the deputy prime minister and the minister of industry, declared that he would either launch Temelín or resign from his post.”
Miroslav Šťastný is an important Czech scientist in the field of steam turbines and turbomachines. He has received many awards and honorary degrees during his life. He was born in Bělá pod Bezdězem on April 5, 1932 and he spent his childhood there. His future career started to develop when he began his studies at the grammar school in Jindřichův Hradec. He was nearly not admitted due to excessive nervousness during the entrance examinations. After graduation he continued with his studies at the Czech Technical University (ČVUT) in Prague. Then he began working in the Škoda factory in Pilsen, where he focused on the design of combustion turbines for aircraft and locomotives. At first he lived in a dormitory, but later he married and he was given an apartment as promised. In 1970-1993 he was the head of the department for research of flow in steam turbines. He contributed to increasing the performance of steam turbines and to the implementation of turbines in the Temelín nuclear power plant. These turbines still continue to operate successfully in the Czech Republic as well as in many countries around the word. He also participated in the construction of turbine laboratories in ŠKODA and ZČU (West Bohemia University) and contributed to increasing the unit performance of steam turbines ŠKODA from 55 MW to 1000 MW. He is also credited with assisting with the start-up of the nuclear power plant Temelín. Miroslav Šťastný received several honorary degrees from various universities, and he is a member of many national and international scientific societies. He holds twelve Czech patents and two European patents. His tireless work in the field of turbine research brought him several important awards - the Medal of Merit 2nd Grade awarded by the Czech president Václav Klaus on October 28, 2012, or the award Czech Head in 2008 in the category Invention. He now lives a tranquil life in the centre of Pilsen, continues to work at the University of West Bohemia and occasionally also helps in the area of science and research.
