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The Biblis Nuclear Power Plant is a
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 ...
in the
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany, the country of the Germans and German things
**Germania (Roman era)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...
municipality of
Biblis that consists of two units: unit A with a gross output of 1200
megawatt
The watt (symbol: W) is the unit of Power (physics), 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 quantification (science), quantify the rate of Work ...
s and unit B with a gross output of 1300 megawatts. Both units are
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, India and Canada).
In a PWR, water is used both as ...
s. The operator of this power plant is the German
RWE Power AG, an electrical utility based in
Essen
Essen () is the central and, after Dortmund, second-largest city of the Ruhr, the largest urban area in Germany. Its population of makes it the fourth-largest city of North Rhine-Westphalia after Cologne, Düsseldorf and Dortmund, as well as ...
.
Unit A began operation on 16 July 1974, and entered commercial service on 25 August 1974; unit B reached
criticality on 25 March 1976. Both units now are shut down indefinitely
for political reasons (''Atomausstieg'').
Biblis is the partner power station of the
Balakovo Nuclear Power Plant.
Closure
In March 2013,
Angela Merkel
Angela Dorothea Merkel (; ; born 17 July 1954) is a German retired politician who served as Chancellor of Germany from 2005 to 2021. She is the only woman to have held the office. She was Leader of the Opposition from 2002 to 2005 and Leade ...
ordered the three-month closure of the Biblis Nuclear Power Plant as an immediate response to the
Fukushima accident.
RWE complied with the decree by shutting Biblis-A immediately. The administrative court for the German state of Hesse ruled that this order was illegal. The court ruled that RWE had not been given sufficient opportunity to respond to the order. Nevertheless, the units are now indefinitely shut down, due to the
government's later decision to phase out all nuclear power (Atomausstieg).
Incidents
On 17 December 1987, an incident (
INES 1) occurred: Operators overlooked a stop valve that had not been closed. In order to close the armature a valve was opened. The radioactive primary cooling water discharged for a short time into the annular space. Because the discharge of the reactor cooling water took place outside of the reactor containment, there was potentially no feedback from the sump over the safety cooling pumps. The incident became public one year later, when an article in an American technical periodical (''Nucleonic Weeks'') was published.
IAEA
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is an intergovernmental organization that seeks to promote the peaceful use of nuclear energy and to inhibit its use for any military purpose, including nuclear weapons. It was established in 1957 ...
There have been no other events higher than 0 on the
INES scale.
See also
*
Anti-nuclear movement in Germany
The anti-nuclear movement in Germany has a long history dating back to the early 1970s when large demonstrations prevented the construction of a nuclear plant at Wyhl. The Wyhl protests were an example of a local community challenging the nuc ...
*
Nuclear power in Germany
Nuclear power was used in Germany from the 1960s until it was fully phased out in April 2023.
German nuclear power began with research reactors in the 1950s and 1960s, with the first commercial plant coming online in 1969. By 1990, nuclear powe ...
*
Vulnerability of nuclear plants to attack
Images
Image:2011.03.26_001.JPG, Biblis Nuclear Power Plant (Germany), block A (right) - block B (left)
Image:AKW_Biblis_03.jpg, Security measures on South site
Image:AKW_Biblis_04.jpg, Ref-flow from cooling towers into the Rhine river (unit A in the background)
Image:AKW_Biblis_06.jpg, Biblis Nuclear Power Plant is on the Rhine river. On the right side two cooling towers from unit A. In the background a ship landing place where heavy components such as reactor vessel
A reactor pressure vessel (RPV) in a nuclear power plant is the pressure vessel containing the nuclear reactor coolant, core shroud, and the reactor core.
Classification of nuclear power reactors
Russian Soviet era RBMK reactors have each fu ...
s and steam generators
A steam generator is a form of low water-content boiler (steam generator), boiler, similar to a flash steam boiler. The usual construction is as a spiral coil of water-tube boiler, water-tube, arranged as a single, or monotube boiler, monotube, c ...
were landed by ship.
References
{{Authority control
Former nuclear power stations in Germany
RWE
1969 establishments in West Germany
Economy of Hesse