report
Status: 04/14/2023 3:27 p.m
After 35 years, the Isar 2 will end on Saturday, when the last German nuclear power plants will be shut down. A visit on the last regular working day shows how difficult it is for employees to say goodbye.
Shortly before 8 a.m. in the morning: the management team at the Isar 2 nuclear power plant met for the last time for the morning meeting. Power plant manager Carsten Müller also came. The mood is depressed. “I think it’s a moving moment for all of us,” he says to his employees. The nuclear power plant supplied Bavaria with electricity for 35 years. “It’s over now.”
Isar-2 plant manager Carsten Müller (right) in a meeting with an employee
Image: Maximilian Rabe
The power plant has produced more than 400 billion kilowatt hours over the past decades – electricity for over three million households. They are proud of their power plant, which, according to the operator PreussenElektra, has not had a single fault in its entire lifetime.
“When we end this tomorrow after 35 years, you can certainly understand that I’m not doing particularly well right now,” says Müller. He and his staff would be attached to the plant. The shutdown tomorrow is a “very difficult step” for him.
A red button is pressed just before midnight
The plant manager visits the control room of the power plant again. The shutdown process on Saturday is controlled from here. At around 10 p.m., the Isar 2 reactor is then gradually shut down. So-called control rods are slowly pushed into the reactor core. The performance then drops every minute.
After disconnecting from the grid, a control room employee will press the red button labeled “ReSA” – which stands for reactor scrambling – shortly before midnight. The cooling tower is expected to stop steaming over the course of Sunday.
The red button – this will shut down Isar 2 on Saturday.
Image: Ralph Zipperlen, BR
Söder calls for a nuclear “revival”
The preparations for the dismantling will then begin for the workforce. Even if Prime Minister Markus Söder announced on Thursday that he wanted to delay this.
As the licensing authority, the Bavarian state government will use all legally possible leeway so as not to accelerate the timelines, said Söder during a visit to the nuclear power plant. And called for a later “revival” of nuclear energy.
Employees are needed for dismantling
A lever could be the dismantling permit, which still has to be granted by the Bavarian Ministry of the Environment. At the factory they expect this by the end of the year. Despite Söder’s advance, plant manager Müller remains cautious. “We will now prepare for the dismantling,” says Müller. The approximately 450 employees will continue to be needed for this.
Nevertheless, the disappointment among the staff in the control room is great. Andreas Hilgärtner is head of the control team. He regrets that a power plant that has put on a “super performance” for years is being sent into “early retirement” for political and ideological reasons. Looking ahead to Saturday, Hilgärtner says he feels queasy.
Plant manager Carsten Müller wants the last few hours to be completed professionally. “Like we’ve been doing all along.”
The daily topics on site are broadcasting live today at 10.15 p.m. from the site of the Isar 2 nuclear power plant.