Biblis Nuclear Power Plant

Biblis Nuclear PowerPlant

Unit A, seen from South-West with two cooling towers
Location of Biblis Nuclear PowerPlant in Germany
Country Germany
Location Biblis
Coordinates 49°42′36″N 8°24′55″E / 49.71000°N 8.41528°E / 49.71000; 8.41528Coordinates: 49°42′36″N 8°24′55″E / 49.71000°N 8.41528°E / 49.71000; 8.41528
Status Closed since 18th March 2011
Construction began 1969
Commission date August 25, 1974
Operator(s) RWE
Nuclear power station
Reactor type PWR
Reactor supplier Siemens
Cooling source Rhine River
Cooling towers 4
Power generation
Make and model Siemens
Units decommissioned 1 x 1,255 MW
1 x 1,300 MW
Nameplate capacity 2,525 MW
Average generation 15,306 GWh
Website
Site c/o RWE

The Biblis Nuclear Power Plant is in the South Hessian municipality of Biblis and consists of two units: unit A with a gross output of 1200 megawatts and unit B with a gross output of 1300 megawatts. Both units are pressurized water reactors. The operator of this power plant is the German RWE Power AG, an electrical utility based in Essen. Unit A began operation on July 16, 1974 and entered commercial service on August 25, 1974; unit B reached criticality on March 25, 1976.

Biblis is the partner power station of the Balakovo Nuclear Power Plant.

Closure

In March 2013, the administrative court for the German state of Hesse ruled that a three-month closure imposed by the government on the Biblis A and B reactors as an immediate response to the Fukushima accident was illegal.[1] The state ministry of the environment acted illegally in March 2011, when an order was issued for the immediate closure of the Biblis units. RWE complied with the decree by shutting Biblis-A immediately, however as the plants were in compliance with the relevant safety requirements, the German government had no legal grounds for shutting them. The court ruled that the closure notice was illegal because RWE had not been given sufficient opportunity to respond to the order.

Incidents

On December 17, 1987 an incident (INES 1) occurred: Coworkers overlooked a stop valve that had not been closed. In order to close the armature a valve was opened. The Radioactive primary cooling agent 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 no feedback from the sump over the safety feeding pumps and/or cooling pumps. The incident became public one year later, when an article in an American technical periodical (Nucleonic Weeks) was published. There have been other incidents afterwards, none of which has been rated over 1 on INES scale.

In the course of a routine swap of unit A's fuel assembly in September 2010 a malfunction of its emergency system was detected. The automated switchover of the power supply from unit B to A proved broken, which meant that the ability to perform countermeasures would have been severely impaired in case of an emergency. Previous demands by Germany's Green party and the IPPNW to construct an external control stand were refused by Hessen's environment minister Lucia Puttrich (CDU) on the ground that both units could provide each other with energy should an incident occur.[2]

INES Events [3] 2011 2010 2009 2008 2007 2006
INES 0 Biblis A 6 6 7 10 5 8
INES 0 Biblis B 13 7 14 6 9 12
INES 1 Biblis A 0 0 0 0 0 1
INES 1 Biblis B 0 0 0 0 0 0

See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Biblis Nuclear Power Plant.

Images

References

  1. ↑ http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NP-Court_rules_Biblis_closure_unlawful-2802137.html
  2. ↑ "Zwei tickende Zeitbomben" (in German). Die Tageszeitung. 2010. Retrieved 2010-10-01.
  3. ↑ http://www.rwe.com/web/cms/mediablob/en/1365522/data/594840/4/rwe/responsibility/cr-reports/blob.xls
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