Biblis Nuclear Power Plant

Biblis Nuclear Power Plant
Biblis Nuclear Power Plant
	Unit A, seen from South-West with two cooling towers
Country	Germany
Location	Biblis
Coordinates	49°42′36″N 8°24′55″E / 49.71000°N 8.41528°E
Status	Closed since 18 March 2011
Construction began	1969
Commission date	August 25, 1974
Decommission date	2011;
Operator(s)	RWE
Nuclear power station
Reactor type	PWR
Reactor supplier	Siemens
Cooling towers	4
Cooling source	Rhine River
Power generation
Make and model	GW·h
External links
Website	Site c/o RWE
Commons	Related media on Commons
	[edit on Wikidata]

The Biblis Nuclear Power Plant is in the

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^{[citation needed]}. Both units now are shut down definitely for political reasons (Atomausstieg).

Biblis is the partner power station of the Balakovo Nuclear Power Plant^{[citation needed]}.

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. Nevertheless, the units are now definitely shut down, based on the later political phaseout decision (Atomausstieg).

Incidents

On December 17, 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.

There have been no other events higher than 0 on the INES scale.^[2]

Images

Biblis Nuclear Power Plant (Germany), block A (right) - block B (left)
Security measures on South site
Ref-flow from cooling towers into the Rhine river (unit A in the background)
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 vessels and steam generators
were landed by ship.