The two 160-metre-high cooling towers at Germany’s former Gundremmingen NPP were demolished on Saturday, almost four years after the last reactor was shut down.
Some 30,000 onlookers, mainly from the states of Bavaria and neighbouring Baden-Württemberg, watched as 56,000 tonnes of reinforced concrete collapsed.
Plant operator RWE, and the demolition company had been preparing for the operation for more than a year. More than 1,000 holes were drilled into the structures for the explosives.
The demolition went according to plan. There were three explosions in total. The first was carried out to chase away nearby animals and wildlife. The second brought down the first tower, and the third caused the second tower to collapse. There was about 15 seconds between the two detonations needed to destroy the two towers. The Günzburg district administration had established a large, restricted zone for the demolition.
The NPP was finally closed at the end of 2021 with the shutdown of its third unit. Since then, it has been undergoing decommissioning, which will continue into the 2030s. Once decommissioning is completed, RWE plans to use the site as a battery facility to store solar power generated during the day when the sun is shining, and then release it at night. A photovoltaic plant and a new gas-fired power station are also planned.
The NPP was operated by Kernkraftwerk Gundremmingen GmbH, a joint operation of RWE Power AG (75%) and PreussenElektra (25%). Unit A, a 237 MWe boiling water reactor (BWR) was the first large nuclear power plant in Germany. It operated from December 1966 until January 1977, when it was closed following a loss of power accident. Units B&C, both 1,248 MWe BWRs, began operation in 1984.
In 2011, following the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident in Japan, Germany decided to phase out nuclear power. Until then, Germany had generated one-quarter of its electricity from nuclear energy with 17 reactors.
The 13th amendment of the Nuclear Power Act was put into effect in 2011, and eight nuclear units were permanently shut down in 2012. These included EnBW’s Phillipsburg unit 1 and Neckarwestheim unit 1; E.ON’s Isar unit 1 and Unterweser; RWE’s Biblis A&B and Vattenfall’s Brunsbüttel and Krümmel (both already closed). The remaining nine reactors were to close by the end of 2022. E.ON’s Grafenrheinfeld closed in 2015; RWE’s Grundremmingen B in 2017; EnBW’s Philippsburg unit 2 in 2019; and Vattenfalls Brokdorf, E.ON’s Grohnde and RWE’s Gundremmingen C in 2021. Two older reactors – E.ON’s Stade NPP and ENBW’s Obrigheim had already been shut down in 2003 and 2005.
