Krümmel Nuclear Power Plant

Krümmel Nuclear Power Plant
Krümmel Nuclear Power Plant
Location of Krümmel Nuclear Power Plant in Germany
Country	Germany
Coordinates
Status	Mothballed (Earmarked not to return following moratorium on nuclear power)
Construction began	1974
Commission date	September 28, 1983
Owner(s)	50% E.ON 50% Vattenfall
Operator(s)	Vattenfall
Nuclear power station
Reactor type	BWR
Reactor supplier	Siemens
Cooling source	Elbe River
Cooling towers	no
Power generation
Units operational	1,402
Make and model	Siemens
Nameplate capacity	1,402 MW
Annual generation	10,178 GWh

Krümmel Nuclear Power Plant is a nuclear power plant in Geesthacht near Hamburg, Germany. It was taken into operation in 1983 and is owned 50% by Vattenfall via Vattenfall Europe Nuclear Energy GmbH and 50% by E.ON, and operated by the Swedish Vattenfall. Its gross power production is 1,401 MW, using a boiling water reactor.

The reactor is the world's second largest of its type in commercial operation. It is nearly identical to three other German nuclear reactors, namely Brunsbüttel Nuclear Power Plant (near Hamburg), Philippsburg Nuclear Power Plant Block 1 and Isar Nuclear Power Plant Block 1, as well as the Austrian Zwentendorf Nuclear Power Plant, that never went into service.

Since July 4, 2009 the reactor is not running.

Controversies and accidents

Since 1986, an overly high number of cases of leukemia have been found in the area around the power plant. While Krümmel has been suspected, it has not been possible to establish the cause of the cases.

On June 28, 2007, a short circuit caused a fire in the transformer of the power plant and required the plant to be shut down. Power outages were experienced in the neighboring areas. The sequence of events caused the dismissal and resignation of several Vattenfall Europe AG employees.

On June 21, 2009, the Krümmel reactor was restarted for the first time since the 2007 fire, and the plant started to produce electricity again but was shut down for the second time on July 4, 2009, only a few days after its two-year-long repair period. The shutdown was caused by a short-circuit in a transformer that was very similar to what caused the June 2007 fire. The reactor shut down normally and was not affected. The plant's general manager resigned. In a press conference July 9, Ernst Michael Züfle, head of the nuclear division of Vattenfall, acknowledged that there was damage to "perhaps a few fuel elements." Even before the shutdown, foreign bodies—sharp shards of metal from earlier work that should have been flushed—were found to have ended up, potentially dangerously, in the reactor and had, to some degree, been cleaned out. On July 7, Wulf Bernotat, CEO of E.on, wrote in a sharply worded letter to Vattenfall management in Sweden that his company was "appalled" by the handling of safety procedures at the plant, according to a lengthy report in Spiegel. The report went on to discuss how the accident could impact the German national debate about nuclear power plant license extensions. Before new transformers could be installed, it was decided in March 2011 to decommission the plant.

External links

Media related to at Wikimedia Commons

• Krümmel BWR (drawing)