Germany's oldest remaining nuclear reactor has been shut down, part of a move initiated four years ago to switch off all its nuclear plants by 2022.
Bavaria's environment ministry said Sunday that the Grafenrheinfeld reactor in the southern German state was taken offline as scheduled overnight, the news agency dpa reported. Grafenrheinfeld went into service in 1981. It's the first reactor to close since Germany switched off the oldest eight of its 17 nuclear reactors in 2011, just after Japan's Fukushima disaster. The next to close will be one of two reactors at the Gundremmingen plant in Bavaria, which is set to shut in late 2017. The rest will be closed by the end of 2022.
Germany aims to generate 80 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2050.
(Score: 1) by angelosphere on Monday June 29 2015, @10:03PM
at slightly reduced output when cooling water was scarce.
Wrong. They ran at 40%, not 40% reduced to 60% ... but: 40%.
the sea is effectively infinite, but that it wasn't cold enough
Wrong twice: a) there are only a hand full of reactors close to the sea, and they are certainly not cooled by sea water. b) All relevant nukes are at rivers. Is the water level to low, the plants are not allowed to use it for cooling. Not because the water is to warm but because the plant would heat up the water to much and cause fish death.
So your environmental friendly plant (in your imagination) is shut down for environmental reasons.
(Score: 4, Informative) by turgid on Monday June 29 2015, @10:20PM
Have you been at the crack pipe? My reply specifically mentioned the UK nuclear power industry because I am British and have direct experience of operational nuclear plant. I can assure you that most of our reactors used sea water for their primary coolant. One site in Wales used water from a lake. None used freshwater from rivers. As for relevance, many are still in operation putting out many gigawatts of electricity and warm water. Yes, other countries have nuclear power stations on rivers. And your efficiency percentages must have floated out of your crack pipe too. Our reactors never got above about 25% thermal efficiency.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].