Würgassen nuclear power plant
| Würgassen nuclear power plant | ||
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| Coordinates | 51 ° 38 '21 " N , 9 ° 23' 29" E | |
| Country: | Germany | |
| Data | ||
| Owner: | PreussenElektra | |
| Operator: | PreussenElektra | |
| Project start: | 1967 | |
| Commercial operation: | Nov 11, 1975 | |
| Shutdown: | Aug 26, 1994 | |
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Decommissioned reactors (gross): |
1 (670 MW) | |
| Energy fed in since commissioning: | 72,922 GWh | |
| Website: | PreussenElektra, Würgassen site | |
| Was standing: | January 2007 | |
| The data source of the respective entries can be found in the documentation . | ||
The Würgassen nuclear power plant (KWW) in the Würgassen district of the city of Beverungen in the East Westphalian district of Höxter consisted of a second generation boiling water reactor . It had a gross electrical output of 670 MW and a net electrical output of 640 MW.
It was built within three years and operated from 1971 to August 26, 1994. During a planned revision, hairline cracks were found in the steel jacket of the reactor core. In 1995, after a detailed investigation, the operator applied for a decommissioning and demolition permit for economic reasons. This was granted by the nuclear regulatory authority in 1997. For 17 years, until 2014, the nuclear power plant was dismantled and then freed from radioactive substances, which cost more than a billion euros in total. Of the 455,000 tonnes of dismantling mass, around 5,000 tonnes of radioactive waste were generated. The remaining buildings can only be dismantled after the interim storage facility for low- and medium-level radioactive waste has been completely cleared. This requires a federal repository to be ready to accept. Until this point in time, the nuclear power plant remains within the scope of the Atomic Energy Act. In March 2020 it became known that a central input storage facility for the Konrad repository is to be built on the site in a subsequent use .
Location
The buildings of the Würgassen nuclear power plant are located in the east Westphalian Weser Uplands on the right bank of the Weser in the eponymous village of Würgassen, only a few kilometers away from the triangle between North Rhine-Westphalia and Lower Saxony and Hesse . Administratively, the nuclear power plant belongs to the city of Beverungen in the Höxter district . The Solling , a wooded low mountain range, rises from north to east . The largest city in the vicinity is Bielefeld with around 336,000 inhabitants (North Rhine-Westphalia, around 70 km west), other large cities in the vicinity are Kassel (Hesse, around 35 km south), Göttingen (Lower Saxony, around 40 km east) and Paderborn (North Rhine-Westphalia, about 45 km west). The next nuclear power plant, Grohnde , is 44 km as the crow flies to the north, also on the Weser.
Setup and commissioning
Reasons for choosing the nuclear power plant location were the increasing energy demand in the region of East Westphalia , South Lower Saxony and North Hesse as well as the cooling water available through the Weser .
The construction of the reactor began on January 26, 1968 by AEG , which implemented a forerunner generation to the type 69 power plant ( KWU ) . The steam turbines were also supplied by AEG Telefunken. It was AEG's last nuclear power plant before Kraftwerk Union AG (KWU) was created in 1969 through the merging of the respective power plant activities of AEG and Siemens , which took over all subsequent AEG nuclear power projects as a manufacturer from 1972. The construction cost 400 million DM. Even the planning phase was accompanied by considerable protests from local citizens' groups. Initially approved with non-nuclear fuel elements, the power plant, built in 1968, was approved for nuclear commissioning in September 1971. On October 20, 1971, the reactor became critical for the first time , making it the first nuclear power plant in Germany that was fully commercially used; the network synchronization took place on December 18, 1971. On November 11, 1975, regular operation began with the handover to the operator PreussenElektra . The successor company from 2000 onwards was E.ON Kernkraft , which has been trading under the name PreussenElektra again since 2016.
investment
In addition to the nuclear reactor, the Würgassen nuclear power plant consisted of the containment, the machine house, the power plant control room, the exhaust chimney, two cooling towers and the grid connection.
Cooling towers
Two 49 m high fan cooling towers were installed in Würgassen . They were subject to normal building law and could therefore be dismantled before the actual plant.
Turbine system
The turbine generator was the only system in a German nuclear power plant to have a medium-pressure turbine in addition to a high-pressure and low-pressure turbine.
Data on the operating time of the Würgassen nuclear power plant
The Würgassen nuclear power plant was shut down several times in the operating time from the handover on November 11, 1975 to December 31, 1994:
- 1,309 days: 16 revisions
- 180.9 days: 42 planned downtimes
- 61.8 days: 63 breakdowns
- 64.6 days: 17 unscheduled repairs
- 386 days: 2 other occasions (1989/90 implementation of fire protection measures, 1994 findings on the core mantle)
By the end of 1994, around 270 tons of spent fuel had been delivered from the Würgassen nuclear power plant to the French reprocessing company Cogema .
Incidents
Plane crashes
In 1978, near Drenke, eight kilometers from the Würgassen nuclear power plant, a British McDonnell F-4 Phantom II fighter plane crashed in low flight and crashed. This triggered an intensive discussion about the extent to which nuclear power plants are adequately protected against plane crashes. The operator PreussenElektra then had to admit that the safety-relevant systems of the Würgassen NPP are only protected up to an impact speed of 350 to 450 km / h. In a 30 km radius around the power plant, another Phantom crashed in 1982 and an Alouette II helicopter each in 1966 and 1968 - before the nuclear power plant was commissioned .
Radioactivity release 1982
On August 20, 1982, when a sand filter was replaced, radioactive dust leaked which, according to the North Rhine-Westphalian Ministry of Labor, was below the permissible radiation dose and whose leakage did not affect anyone. The journalist Günter Wallraff , on the other hand, reports on 14 workers who were so badly “contaminated” as a result of this incident that the power plant's own decontamination by showering was not sufficient and the workers in the “radiation clinic in Düsseldorf” had to be examined.
Find of uranium in the neighboring village
A case that has often been associated with the Würgassen NPP, but which, according to the investigative authorities, has nothing to do with the power plant, is the incompletely clarified appearance of radioactive material in Lauenförde , a neighboring town of Würgassen, in 2007 A man found 110 grams of weakly enriched uranium in the front yard of his house, which the owner said he had buried there himself in 1992.
Shutdown
The original plan was to operate the power plant until 2010. In October 1994, in cooperation with the Materials Testing Institute of the University of Stuttgart, during a routine inspection , the TÜV discovered hairline cracks in a steel cylinder (core jacket) on the reactor core that were up to 60 mm in length. It could not be determined whether these cracks had already appeared during construction or only during operation. The steel jacket has the task of conducting heat and should not keep any pressure off. Intergranular stress corrosion cracking was found to be the mechanism for the cracks on the core mantle and on the core lattice plates on the basis of two examined material samples. The cause is seen in the composition of the material as well as in the annealing treatment during production, through which sensitization occurred.
The nuclear regulatory authority requested the cylinder to be replaced and announced a new licensing procedure. This seemed to the PreussenElektra as uneconomical. It assumed a complete renovation of the core fixtures, which would have cost at least 200 million marks and would have caused a two-year downtime. On June 2, 1995, PreussenElektra declared to the Ministry of Economics, Medium- sized Enterprises and Technology of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, the nuclear licensing and supervisory authority, that it intended to shut down the nuclear power plant in Würgassen for economic reasons.
This was a significant financial loss for the city of Beverungen, because it received trade tax income in the millions while the power plant was in operation.
Fuel pool and waste
By December 31, 1994, 632 fuel element positions were occupied in the fuel element storage pool of the shutdown nuclear power plant, of which 117 (20 tons of heavy metal) were spent with spent fuel, 340 (59 tons of heavy metal) with partially spent fuel elements, and 175 with other, for example fresh, fuel elements.
On December 31, 1994, approx. 1,600 m³ of radioactive waste with negligible heat generation and approx. 270 m³ of non-heat-generating raw waste or residues were stored in the Würgassen nuclear power plant. The radioactive residues were taken to the research centers in Karlsruhe or Jülich for decontamination , to the GNS Gesellschaft für Nuklear-Service for high pressure injection and concreting , to Siempelkamp Nukleartechnik GmbH for melting and to Studsvik ( Södermanland County , Sweden) for incineration .
The plan is now to have some of the construction waste thermally treated and disposed of at the Sita Remediation company in Herne due to conventional requirements (PCB buildup) . This was confirmed by a spokesman for the North Rhine-Westphalian Ministry of Economics in March 2013.
In January 2020, the federally owned BGZ Gesellschaft für Zwischenlagerung took over the management of one of the two remaining interim storage facilities at the site of the former nuclear power plant.
Dismantling
The nuclear power plant was dismantled by summer 2014. Almost 50 companies with a total of 440 employees were involved in the dismantling, 128 of them from the E.ON Group and staff from the nuclear power plant. The rubble was stored in the Wetro or Cröbern landfills in Saxony , among others . For 17 years until 2014, the nuclear power plant was dismantled for more than a billion euros and freed from radioactive substances. Of the 455,000 tonnes of dismantling mass, around 5,000 tonnes of radioactive waste were generated. The remaining buildings can only be demolished after the interim storage facility for low- and medium-level radioactive waste at the site has been completely cleared. This requires a federal repository to be ready to accept. Due to planning uncertainties regarding the final disposal of radioactive waste, the final dismantling of the buildings of the former nuclear power plant is likely to be "delayed for many years".
A spokesman for the Federal Office for Radiation Protection (BfS) said in October 2014 that the reason that no waste from the completely dismantled Würgassen NPP can now be stored in the Konrad mine has nothing to do with the delays at Konrad. Rather, the reason is that the low and medium level radioactive waste in the Würgasser interim storage facility has not yet been prepared in such a way that it can be emplaced in Konrad (status: October 21, 2014).
Reuse
The site of the Würgassen nuclear power plant is to be cleared of the originally radioactively contaminated power plant structures. A last control measurement on August 29, 2019 determined that the remaining building structures were free from contamination. The reactor building will remain there until further notice. Two interim storage facilities for radioactive substances have been set up on the site.
On January 1, 2020, the federally owned company for interim storage (BGZ) took over the management of one of the two interim storage facilities in Würgassen. At the same time, interim storage facilities for low and medium level radioactive substances were also taken over by the BGZ at other nuclear power plant locations. These halls are located in Biblis (two warehouses), Obrigheim, Unterweser, Stade and Würgassen.
At the beginning of March 2020 it was announced that the central input storage facility for the Konrad repository , which should be completed in 2027 , will be built on the site of the former Würgassen nuclear power plant . An above-ground hall made of reinforced concrete is to be built here, which will serve as a logistics center for low and medium-level radioactive waste, intended for storage in the Konrad repository. It should be around 325 meters long, 125 meters wide and 16 meters high.
criticism
Cancer in the area
In 1980 studies were carried out in which u. a. The University of Bremen also collaborated, to the conclusion that in an area of 15 to 20 km (but not closer than that) around the power plant, there was a significantly increased number of cancer cases in children. This particular constellation was potentially attributed to chimney taxes. The study was then continued by the University of Göttingen for the period 1980 to 1988, whereby an increase was found, but this time it was not significant.
Greenpeace protest against the removal of the fuel elements
In April 1996, the environmental protection organization Greenpeace protested against the removal of the fuel elements from the decommissioned nuclear power plant to the French reprocessing plant in La Hague and attached a steel box to the railway tracks. According to Greenpeace, the transport was unnecessary and endangered the population; the fuel elements should rather remain in the nuclear power plant until there is a finished repository. The removal of the castor containers was delayed by eleven days.
Data of the reactor block
During the term, 72,922 GWh of electricity were generated.
The Würgassen nuclear power plant had a power plant block :
| Reactor block | Reactor type | AEG construction line | net electrical power |
gross electrical power |
thermal reactor power |
start of building | Network synchronization |
Commercialization of essential operation |
switching off processing |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Würgassen (KWW) | Boiling water reactor | 2nd generation before construction line 69 (KWU) |
640 MW | 670 MW | 1912 MW | January 26, 1968 | 18th December 1971 | November 11, 1975 | August 26, 1994 |
attachment
Web links
- Data on the Würgassen NPP
- Information on the Würgassen nuclear power plant and its dismantling can be found on the website of the operator PreussenElektra
supporting documents
- ^ Nuclear energy in Germany: Annual report 2006. Deutsches Atomforum eV, Berlin 2006. ISSN 1611-9592 , p. 58
- ↑ a b c d Power Reactor Information System of the IAEA : "Germany, Federal Republic of: Nuclear Power Reactors" (English)
- ↑ Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung No. 242 of October 17, 2014 Page 6: Michael B. Berger: “The last one turns off the light. The first commercially used nuclear power plant was gutted with great meticulousness in 17 years - Würgassen an der Oberweser. "
- ^ Bielefeld - Current population figures. Retrieved July 11, 2017 .
- ↑ Chronicle of the Würgassen nuclear power plant ( memento from September 6, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) on the website of the operator E.ON Kernkraft
- ↑ EON nuclear power video on the Würgassen NPP: Documentary film series: Dismantling the Würgassen nuclear power plant: Demolition of the cooling towers
- ↑ Würgassen nuclear power plant - 12 years of successful dismantling Operator's brochure on dismantling the nuclear power plant , page 8
- ↑ Der Spiegel 38/1978, accessed in May 2010
- ↑ German Bundestag: Particular safety risks from the operation of the Würgassen nuclear power plant (North Rhine-Westphalia). In: Printed matter 10/3167. April 11, 1985, accessed January 15, 2020 .
- ↑ Würgassen KWW nuclear power plant. atom-aktuell.de, February 21, 2014, accessed on November 13, 2018 .
- ^ Günter Wallraff: At the bottom . Kiepenheuer & Witsch eBook, 2017, ISBN 978-3-462-30591-3 ( google.de [accessed January 15, 2020]).
- ↑ Spiegel Online from March 2, 2007: Uranium in the garden - Lord of the pellets
- ↑ Udo Leuschner - October 1994 - Cracks discovered in the reactor core of the Würgassen NPP
- ↑ Max Rauner: From the nuclear power plant to the green field. In: Berliner Zeitung . July 1, 2003, accessed June 9, 2015 .
- ↑ Energie Chronik Udo Leuschner accessed in May 2010
- ↑ State of North Rhine-Westphalia approves storage of PCB-containing Akw waste in Herne. March 22, 2013, accessed May 4, 2013 .
- ↑ Würgassen - Zwischenlager.info. Retrieved April 22, 2020 (German).
- ↑ Direct dismantling ( Memento from October 18, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ The demolition takes a total of 30 years . HNA online report from March 4, 2014.
- ^ Sächsische Zeitung: Building rubble from nuclear power plant comes to Saxony on August 12, 2014
- ↑ Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung No. 242 of October 17, 2014 Page 6: Michael B. Berger: “The last one turns off the light. The first commercially used nuclear power plant was gutted with great meticulousness in 17 years - Würgassen an der Oberweser. "
- ↑ The demolition takes a total of 30 years . HNA online report from March 4, 2014.
- ↑ Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung No. 245 of Tuesday, October 21, 2014 Page 6: Michael B. Berger: “The excavators rotate in the Konrad shaft. The future storage facility for low-level radioactive nuclear waste is being expanded considerably / completion is still uncertain. "
- ↑ Westfalenblatt: KKW-Wuergassen-10.000-Faesser-with-medium-and-weakly radioactive-rubble-until-at least-2027-in-the-interim storage-BGZ-uebernehmen-Fuehrung-in-Wuergassen , accessed on March 7, 2020
- ↑ Rheinische Post online: Decision-of-the-BGZ-in-Wuergassen-is-a-central-interim-storage-for-nuclear waste evaded on March 7th, 2020
- ↑ Westfalenblatt: KKW-Wuergassen-10.000-Faesser-with-medium-and-weakly radioactive-rubble-until-at least-2027-in-the-interim storage-BGZ-uebernehmen-Fuehrung-in-Wuergassen , accessed on March 7, 2020
- ↑ Home | Logistics center for the Konrad repository. Retrieved March 7, 2020 .
- ↑ Hendrik Kranert-Rydzy: Logistics center for Konrad repository is being built in Würgassen - BGZ Gesellschaft für Zwischenlagerung mbH. Accessed March 7, 2020 (German).
- ↑ Der Spiegel: Wuergassen nuclear waste storage facility in the triangle of North Rhine-Westphalia, Lower Saxony and Hesse planned , accessed on March 7, 2020
- ↑ Hendrik Kranert-Rydzy: Logistics center for Konrad repository is being built in Würgassen - BGZ Gesellschaft für Zwischenlagerung mbH. Accessed March 7, 2020 (German).
- ↑ IPPNW article Children's cancer around nuclear power plants ( Memento from April 7, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
- ^ Homepage of the anti-atomic force movement accessed in May 2010
- ^ Nuclear energy in Germany. Annual report 2006. Deutsches Atomforum eV, Berlin 2006. ISSN 1611-9592 , p. 58