Großwelzheim Nuclear Power Plant, (german: Kernkraftwerk Großwelzheim, HDR), was an experimental

nuclear power plant A nuclear power plant (NPP) is a thermal power station in which the heat source is a nuclear reactor. As is typical of thermal power stations, heat is used to generate steam that drives a steam turbine connected to a electric generator, generato ...

consisting of one 25 MW reactor in Großwelzheim, a district of

Karlstein am Main Karlstein am Main (officially ''Karlstein a. Main'') is a municipality in the Aschaffenburg district in the ''Regierungsbezirk'' of Lower Franconia (''Unterfranken'') in Bavaria, Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of G ...

. The prototype

boiling water reactor A boiling water reactor (BWR) is a type of light water nuclear reactor used for the generation of electrical power. It is a design different from a Soviet graphite-moderated RBMK. It is the second most common type of electricity-generating nuc ...

, designed to produce superheated steam was under construction from 1965 to 1969, and was first connected to the power grid on October 14, 1969. The reactor could not be run at full capacity due to structural defects in the fuel elements. Because of this, the reactor was switched off about a year and a half later on April 20, 1971. Wappen_Karlstein_am_Main

After the decommissioning in 1983, the plant was used for reactor safety tests until dismantling was completed in 1998.Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
Lexikon zur Kernenergie, Stichwort "HDR"
(PDF; 7,6 MB), Accessed January 1, 2018 The site also included the

Kahl Nuclear Power Plant The Kahl plant was the first nuclear power plant ever to be built in Germany. It was located in Karlstein am Main and was an (at the time) experimental boiling water reactor. It was built by General Electric and supplied by Siemens. At the end o ...

, the first nuclear reactor to be built in Germany, as well as the first to be shut down. This makes the site the first in Germany where two reactors have been dismantled. When the community of

was created in 1975, an atomic symbol was included in the municipal coat of arms, due to the two reactors present in the newly formed town.

Reactors

Großwelzheim Nuclear Power Plant had one Reactor:

References

Former nuclear power stations in Germany Economy of Bavaria Buildings and structures in Bavaria Former nuclear power stations {{DENPPlants