Kahl Nuclear Power Plant Memorial

The VAK power plant went into operation on November 13, 1960, and electricity was first fed into the public grid on June 17, 1961. It was the technical successor to the 24 MW Vallecitos nuclear power plant in the USA, owned by General Electric, which had begun commercial operation in 1957.
The experimental reactor operated for a total of 150,000 hours and produced 2.1 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity. According to the German Federal Environment Agency (BfE), 90 defects and incidents occurred during its operation, seven of which were classified as serious.
After more than 25 years of operation, the power plant was shut down on November 25, 1985. Preparations for its dismantling began in 1986, and the first dismantling work began in 1988. The characteristic yellow dome was removed in 2005. Due to the high radioactivity of the reinforced concrete, remote-controlled small excavators were used to dismantle the reactor cladding. The demolition took longer than the operation and cost €150 million.