Grafenrheinfeld is a

municipality A municipality is usually a single administrative division having municipal corporation, corporate status and powers of self-government or jurisdiction as granted by national and regional laws to which it is subordinate. The term ''municipality ...

in the district 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 a ...

Bavaria Bavaria ( ; ), officially the Free State of Bavaria (german: Freistaat Bayern, link=no ), is a state in the south-east of Germany. With an area of , Bavaria is the largest German state by land area, comprising roughly a fifth of the total l ...

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG),, is a country in Central Europe. It is the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany lies between the Baltic and North Sea to the north and the Alps to the sou ...

. The municipality is home to the

nuclear power station 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 generator that produces ele ...

, Grafenrheinfeld, which opened in 1982.

Grafenrheinfeld Nuclear Power Station

The nuclear power station Grafenrheinfeld (short: KKG - not to confused with the similarly abbreviated nuclear power station Goesgen in Switzerland) is located south of Schweinfurt at the Main. Commencement of construction was 1974, start-up took place 1981. It consists of a 3rd 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) is ...

("pre-Konvoi") with an electrical output of 1345 MW. Operator is the E.ON nuclear power GmbH headquartered in Hanover. The two

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 and ...

s with a height of 143 m are visible from far away. The nuclear power station was "power station world champion" in both years 1984 and 1985. In the much discussed anti-nuclear power novel ''

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 ...

'' by

Gudrun Pausewang Gudrun Pausewang (3 March 1928 – 23 January 2020), less commonly known by her married name, Gudrun Wilcke, was a German author of children's and young adult literature. She was known for books such as '' The Last Children of Schewenborn'' and ...

, a fictitious nuclear disaster occurs at Grafenrheinfeld, releasing a radioactive cloud which pollutes much of Germany. In the film of the same name, a fictitious plant name is used. Temporary storage facilities for depleted core fuel elements at the location went into use on 1 March 2006.

KFU-Mast

The KFU (nuclear reactor remote control, German Kernenergiefernüberwachung) mast Grafenrheinfeld is a guyed steel framework mast for the measurement of meteorological parameters and environmental radioactivity. It is visible for a long distance and is outside of the plant area approximately 750 meters south the power station. The KFU-mast is 164 meters high and was built in 1977/78.

References

Schweinfurt (district) {{Schweinfurtdistrict-geo-stub