AVR reactor

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AVR reactor
Country	Germany
Coordinates	50°54′11″N 6°25′16″E / 50.90306°N 6.42111°E / 50.90306; 6.42111
Status	Decommissioned
Construction began	1961
Commission date	May 19, 1969
Decommission date	December 31, 1988
Power generation
Units decommissioned	1 x 15 MW
Capacity factor	50.0%
Annual net output	65.7 GWh
External links
Commons	Related media on Commons
[edit on Wikidata]

The AVR reactor (German: Arbeitsgemeinschaft Versuchsreaktor) was a prototype pebble-bed reactor, located immediately adjacent to Jülich Research Centre in West Germany, constructed in 1960, grid connected in 1967 and shut down in 1988. It was a 15 MWe, 46 MWt test reactor used to develop and test a variety of fuels and machinery.

The AVR was based on the concept of a "Daniels pile" by Farrington Daniels, the inventor of pebble bed reactors. Rudolf Schulten is commonly recognized as the intellectual father of the reactor.

A consortium of 15 community electric companies owned and operated the plant. Over its lifetime the reactor had many accidents, earning it the name "shipwreck." From 2011 to 2014, outside experts examined the historical operations and operational hazards and described serious concealed problems and wrongdoings in their final 2014 report. For example, in 1978 operators bypassed reactor shutdown controls to delay an emergency shutdown during an accident for six days. In 2014 the JRC and AVR publicly admitted to failures.

Its decommissioning has been exceptionally difficult, time-consuming and expensive. Since the original operators were overwhelmed by the effort, government agencies took over dismantling and disposal. In 2003 the reactor and its nuclear waste became government property.^[1] The temporary storage of 152 casks of spent fuel has been a controversy since 2009. The approval expired in 2013, because stress tests could not sufficiently demonstrate safety; no permanent solution has been reached. Since 2012 plans to export the casks to the United States have been considered due to the extremely high disposal expenses. In 2014, a massive concrete wall to protect against terrorist plane crashes was to be built. On July 2, 2014, the Federal Environment ministry issued an evacuation order^{[clarification needed]} for the temporary storage.^[2]

AVR was the basis of the technology licensed to China^{[citation needed]} to build HTR-10 and the HTR-PM, which became operational in 2021.

The reactor is located next to the largest open-pit coal mine in Germany, the Tagebau Hambach.