The Grafenrheinfeld nuclear power plant (german: Kernkraftwerk Grafenrheinfeld, KKG) is a now-offline electricity-generating facility near

Grafenrheinfeld Grafenrheinfeld is a Municipalities of Germany, municipality in the district of Schweinfurt (district), Schweinfurt in Bavaria, Germany. The municipality is home to the Nuclear reactor technology, nuclear power station, Grafenrheinfeld, which open ...

, south of

Schweinfurt Schweinfurt ( , ; ) is a city in the district of Lower Franconia in Bavaria, Germany. It is the administrative centre of the surrounding district (''Landkreis'') of Schweinfurt and a major industrial, cultural and educational hub. The urban ag ...

at the river

Main Main may refer to: Geography * Main River (disambiguation) **Most commonly the Main (river) in Germany * Main, Iran, a village in Fars Province *"Spanish Main", the Caribbean coasts of mainland Spanish territories in the 16th and 17th centuries ...

. The plant operated from 1981 to June 28, 2015, when it was taken offline as part of the phase out policy for

nuclear power in Germany Nuclear power in Germany accounted for 13.3% of German electricity supply in 2021, generated by six power plants, of which three were switched off at the end of 2021, the other three due to cease operation at the end of 2022 according to the co ...

Construction and history

Construction took place between 1974 and 1981, which cost around 2.5 billion DM. The reactor, a German third-generation

pressurized water reactor A pressurized water reactor (PWR) is a type of light-water nuclear reactor. PWRs constitute the large majority of the world's nuclear power plants (with notable exceptions being the UK, Japan and Canada). In a PWR, the primary coolant (water) i ...

with an electrical net power output of 1,345

megawatt The watt (symbol: W) is the unit of power or radiant flux in the International System of Units (SI), equal to 1 joule per second or 1 kg⋅m2⋅s−3. It is used to quantify the rate of energy transfer. The watt is named after James ...

s, achieved first criticality on December 9, 1981. The plant is managed by PreussenElektra GmbH. The two tall

cooling tower A cooling tower is a device that rejects waste heat to the atmosphere through the cooling of a coolant stream, usually a water stream to a lower temperature. Cooling towers may either use the evaporation of water to remove process heat an ...

s are visible from far away. As with almost all other nuclear plants, temporary storage facilities for

spent nuclear fuel Spent nuclear fuel, occasionally called used nuclear fuel, is nuclear fuel that has been irradiated in a nuclear reactor (usually at a nuclear power plant). It is no longer useful in sustaining a nuclear reaction in an ordinary thermal reactor and ...

are present on site. There is an information center at the power station. Under the phase out policy for

, the plant was scheduled to shut down on 31 December 2015. Citing economical reasons, E.ON declared intent to shut down the plant earlier, originally at end of May 2015.

Plant taken offline

The Grafenrheinfeld plant was taken offline on June 28, six months before scheduled to close on December 3, 2015 as part of Germany's ongoing policy to shut all nuclear power plants down in the country by 2022. The plant owners decided it was uneconomic to continue operation as planned.

In the media

In the anti-nuclear

teen novel Young adult fiction (YA) is a category of fiction written for readers from 12 to 18 years of age. While the genre is primarily targeted at adolescents, approximately half of YA readers are adults. The subject matter and genres of YA correlate ...

Die Wolke ''Die Wolke'' () is a German novel for young adults by German author Gudrun Pausewang, published in 1987. The story was written after the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Ukraine, with a 14-year-old girl having to deal with the consequences o ...

'' (1987), the power plant undergoes a meltdown.

References

{{Authority control Former nuclear power stations in Germany Economy of Bavaria Schweinfurt (district)