The last days of a controversial nuclear-dinosaur are down for the count: France, the home of the oldest running nuclear power plant in the Alsatian Fessenheim will be closed down for good. More than 42 years, the NPP produced on the German-French border electricity and a lot of Controversy between the neighbouring countries. Critics of the power plant on the Rhine was considered for decades as a security risk. The NPP-the end to mark the start of a rebirth Fessenheims as a flagship location for renewable energy, with German participation.

late Monday, The evening begins after the operator details of the decommissioning. The first pressurized water reactor had already been at the end of February removed from the grid. In Baden-Württemberg and the Swiss border skin in North-Eastern, the expectations are after the final shutdown of the high.

On the Agenda

No time should be lost, projects to wrap up, tells Brigitte Klinkert, who is President of the Département Council, spearheaded the effort to redesign the Region of Fessenheim. Green hydrogen production, battery Recycling, and many other project ideas are on the table - the Vision is a German-French innovation Park in the vicinity of the municipality.

The transformation of the Region is one of the prestige projects of cooperation between Paris and Berlin. After France's state-announced-in-chief Emmanuel Macron 2018, the end of the Fessenheim NPP personally, the redevelopment project on the occasion of the signing of the "Aachener contract" on a German-French Agenda. It was a good, says the Freiburg President of the government of Bärbel Schäfer. "We have the attention of both governments."

removal takes 15 years,

it also relies on the proposed direct rail link over a new bridge over the Rhine between Freiburg and Colmar as a stimulus for the border region. The car industry will bring track power, says Schäfer. She is convinced that Fessenheim will be with green innovation projects, a flagship model, and in France even to rethink can stimulate. "First of all, by making it clear that The end of a nuclear power plant is not the end of a Region." The green business Park have the potential to create more jobs than the nuclear power plant, Schaefer.

In the projects, which are now to be quickly taken across the border in attack, playing the surface on which the power plant itself is, so far, no major role, as Schaefer explains. Because the dismantling of the Nuclear power plant is expected to take the next two decades. According to the information of the operator EDF, the demo days are for preparation of five year estimated - the removal will take a further 15 years. Reuters A protest banner in French with the words "no! the closure of Fessenheim" is hanging on the fence near the entrance to the factory premises of the nuclear power plant (NPP)

The "nuclear country" of Europe

The French nuclear safety authority ASN had expressed the least concerns at the plans. The EDF submitted the Details of the dismantling scenario and the disposal of the resulting waste are inadequate, criticised the authority. EDF has, in the meantime, and a new report submitted. What Changes have been made, informed ASN first. Accordingly, the examination of the report over time.

France is known as a "nuclear country" in Europe. After the closure of Fessenheims EDF operates according to its own data country-wide 56 reactors. Approximately 71 percent of the French electricity production last year, according to data from grid operator RTE-out of nuclear power. This corresponded, therefore, the lowest percentage since 1989. France is behind the United States is still on course, two of the largest producers of nuclear power in the world.

The enthusiasm is

The most recent project, the majority of the French state-owned company EDF is developing more and more for problem child: the construction of The nuclear reactor in Flamanville on the English channel has been tangled up for years. Last year, the commissioning had been postponed from 2020 to the end of 2022, because, among other things, leaking weld seams were found in the steel case. At the end of March, the government adopted by decree a further displacement of the pile must be loaded by the end of 2024, with the fuel rods.

Since the decree was enacted without public participation in the midst of the high phase of the Coronavirus pandemic in France, accusing environmental groups of the government administrative trickery and fraud. The French Anti-nuclear network, Sortir du nucléaire called for the plant in Normandy will not even put into operation. Also the cost for the construction of the reactor were to explode and is now at a multiple of the originally planned expenditure.

The low enthusiasm of the French people about new power plant projects in recent times within limits: Minister of the environment Borne had indicated at the beginning of the year that France wanted to think about the construction of new power plants at the earliest the end of 2022. The government announced in the framework of energy roadmap to the shutdown of the reactor pairs at several locations to check. Ten years of solar activity: Nasa published a spectacular sun-time lapse-FOCUS Online-Ten years of solar activity: Nasa published a spectacular sun-time-lapse

Date Of Update: 09 July 2020, 14:27