In Bavaria, two cooling towers at the decommissioned Gundremmingen nuclear power plant were deliberately destroyed in a controlled explosion on October 25. The German news portal Tagesschau reported that the 160-meter-high structures were demolished by RWE, the energy company overseeing the site’s dismantling. The destruction marks a key phase in the plant’s decommissioning process, which began after electricity production at its second power unit ceased in 2017 and the third unit was completed in 2021. Full dismantling is expected to conclude by 2030.
RWE has already initiated plans for the site’s future use, with a groundbreaking ceremony scheduled for October 29 for a 700 MWh energy storage system, set to become Germany’s largest. The Gundremmingen plant, operational since 1966, once supplied about a quarter of Bavaria’s electricity, producing 20 billion kWh annually.
Separately, a fire in the reactor area of the decommissioned Grafenreinfeld nuclear power plant in Bavaria was extinguished last year after technical issues triggered the incident. The Grafenreinfeld facility, shut down in 2015, began dismantling in 2018.
