Obrigheim: Decommissioning well underway
The Obrigheim Nuclear Power Plant (KWO) is located between Heidelberg and Heilbronn, directly on the Neckar River. The plant began operation in October 1968 as West Germany’s first commercially operated pressurized water reactor and was shut down in 2005. During this period, it generated more than 90 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity.
For us, the KWO is a pioneering facility - both in terms of nuclear power generation in Baden-Württemberg and in terms of decommissioning. Decommissioning began in Obrigheim in 2008 and is now well advanced: nearly all plant components have been removed from both the turbine hall and the reactor building. A current focus of the decommissioning activities in Obrigheim is the removal of surface layers from selected floors, walls and ceilings within various buildings, as well as preparations for the removal of the remaining concrete structures from the former reactor building. We currently anticipate that the decommissioning of the power plant, within the framework of nuclear regulations, will likely be completed by the early 2030s.
Decommissioning of Obrigheim
The original nuclear facility in the reactor building has been almost completely dismantled: The reactor pressure vessel (RPV), weighing approximately 135 tons and formerly the heart of the plant, has been completely disassembled. The two steam generators, each weighing around 160 tons, which previously transferred the heat generated in the reactor pressure vessel from the primary to the secondary circuit of the power plant, have also been dismantled and removed from the building. The removal of the massive concrete structures (“biological shield”) that formerly surrounded the reactor pressure vessel, the reactor pool above it, and the former spent fuel storage pool has also been completed. The building crane was dismantled as the last major component. Preparations are currently underway for the removal of the remaining concrete structures from the reactor building.
In the KWO’s conventional turbine hall, a generator used to convert the kinetic energy of the turbines into electrical energy. Starting in 2008, the turbine hall was one of the first sites to undergo decommissioning in Obrigheim. Demolition work there has been fully completed for several years now - what remains is a largely empty, gutted building.
Measuring all building structures remaining after decommissioning is an important prerequisite for releasing the Obrigheim site from nuclear regulatory oversight. In the rooms where decommissioning work has been fully completed, these extensive measurements have already begun. In this way, we demonstrate that the decommissioning measures have ensured that the KWO no longer poses a radiological risk to people or the environment. If necessary, we determine additional measures based on the measurements. These typically involve further removal of floors, walls, ceilings, or entire concrete structures.