Krümmel Nuclear Power Plant is a German

nuclear power plant A nuclear power plant (NPP), also known as a nuclear power station (NPS), nuclear generating station (NGS) or atomic power station (APS) is a thermal power station in which the heat source is a nuclear reactor. As is typical of thermal power st ...

Geesthacht Geesthacht () is the largest city in the Lauenburg (district), District of the Duchy of Lauenburg (Herzogtum Lauenburg) in Schleswig-Holstein in Northern Germany, south-east of Hamburg on the right bank of the Elbe, River Elbe. History A church ...

Schleswig-Holstein Schleswig-Holstein (; ; ; ; ; occasionally in English ''Sleswick-Holsatia'') is the Northern Germany, northernmost of the 16 states of Germany, comprising most of the historical Duchy of Holstein and the southern part of the former Duchy of S ...

, near

Hamburg Hamburg (, ; ), officially the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg,. is the List of cities in Germany by population, second-largest city in Germany after Berlin and List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, 7th-lar ...

. It was taken into operation in 1983 and is owned 50% by

Vattenfall Vattenfall is a Swedish multinational corporation, multinational electrical power industry, power company owned by the List of government enterprises of Sweden, Swedish state. Beyond Sweden, the company generates power in Denmark, Finland, Germa ...

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 A boiling water reactor (BWR) is a type of nuclear reactor used for the generation of electrical power. It is the second most common type of electricity-generating nuclear reactor after the pressurized water reactor (PWR). BWR are thermal neutro ...

. The reactor was 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, after the reactor is not running, and since 2011 it is definitely shutdown due to popular demand. (Atomausstieg).

Controversies and accidents

Since 1986, a significantly higher than average number of cases of

leukemia Leukemia ( also spelled leukaemia; pronounced ) is a group of blood cancers that usually begin in the bone marrow and produce high numbers of abnormal blood cells. These blood cells are not fully developed and are called ''blasts'' or '' ...

have been found in the area around the power plant. On June 28, 2007, a short circuit caused a fire in the

transformer In electrical engineering, a transformer is a passive component that transfers electrical energy from one electrical circuit to another circuit, or multiple Electrical network, circuits. A varying current in any coil of the transformer produces ...

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."ATOMIC NIGHTMARE: Krümmel Accident Puts Question Mark over Germany's Nuclear Future"
by ''Spiegel'' staff; Petra Bornhöft, Markus Deggerich, Frank Dohmen, Sebastian Knauer, Gunther Latsch, Christian Salewski, Christian Schwägerl, Samiha Shafy; Trans. from the German by Christopher Sultan. 7/13/09. Retrieved 8/16/2009. Before new transformers could be installed, it was decided in March 2011 to decommission the plant.

References

External links

Krümmel BWR (drawing)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Krummel Nuclear Power Plant Former nuclear power stations in Germany Buildings and structures in Herzogtum Lauenburg Economy of Schleswig-Holstein Vattenfall nuclear power stations Energy infrastructure completed in 1983 1983 establishments in West Germany 2011 disestablishments in Germany