Germany’s Krümmel nuclear power plant has been given the regulatory go-ahead to move from post-operation to decommissioning, with dismantling work scheduled to take about 15 years.

The permit to begin the decommissioning and dismantling was issued by the head of the nuclear supervisory authority in Kiel, Andreas Wasielewski, to Ingo Neuhaus, managing director of Vattenfall’s nuclear energy division in Germany, and Torsten Fricke, the head of the nuclear power plant.

Neuhaus said: “This is an important milestone on the way to the ‘greenfield’ site of the power plant. During the dismantling work, we can draw on the experience we gained at the Brunsbüttel nuclear power plant. We started dismantling there in 2019.”

The Krümmel plant - comprising a single 1260 MWe boiling water reactor - is jointly owned by Vattenfall and EOn. The plant, operated by Vattenfall, was connected to the grid in 1983, but was out of service for several years. It suffered a transformer fire in 2007 and, following repairs, was restarted in June 2009 but taken offline again the following month due to a transformer fault.

Krümmel was one of eight older power reactors that had their operating licences withdrawn by the federal government shortly after the Fukushima accident in Japan in March 2011 as part of the political decision to phase out nuclear power in the country. Vattenfall submitted an application to decommission and dismantle the plant, in the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein, in 2015.

The total weight of the power plant to be dismantled is estimated at 540,000 tonnes and will cost around EUR1 billion (USD1.1 billion). The last fuel element was removed in 2017 and the last individual fuel rods in 2019. Around 99% of the radioactive inventory has already left the power plant.

The next phase of work will start with the reactor pressure vessel internals, which make up the vast majority of the remaining 1% of radioactive inventory. A consortium of specialist companies has put together a team to work on the reactor pressure vessel internals, starting towards the end of this year, with completion for that part of the work scheduled for 2027. Each part of the dismantling operation must be applied for individually.

Decommissioning and dismantling work is taking place at a number of Germany’s nuclear power plants. Earlier this week the two cooling towers at the Grafenrheinfeld nuclear power plant were demolished in a controlled explosion.