Biblis Nuclear Power Plant
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. 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 indefinitely 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.
See also
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/4a/Commons-logo.svg/30px-Commons-logo.svg.png)
Images
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Biblis Nuclear Power Plant (Germany), block A (right) - block B (left)
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Security measures on South site
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Ref-flow from cooling towers into the Rhine river (unit A in the background)
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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.
References
- ^ "Court rules Biblis closure unlawful - World Nuclear News". World-nuclear-news.org. Retrieved 16 December 2018.
- ^ "RWE AG : Crkennzahlken 2011" (XLS). Rwe.com. Retrieved 16 December 2018.