Goesgen Nuclear Power Plant

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Data
Goesgen Nuclear Power Plant
The Gösgen NPP
Country	Switzerland
Operator	Kernkraftwerk Gösgen-Däniken AG
Built	1973
Start of commercial operation	February 2, 1979
Reactors
Reactors active	1 (1020 MW)
Power
Total power generation in 2006	8099 GWh
Average annual generation (last 5 yrs)	9886 GWh
Net generation	201,533 GWh
Other details
As of April 5, 2007

The Swiss Nuclear power station Gösgen (KKG) is on the Aare River in the canton Solothurn. It started commercial operation in November 1979 and is the first nuclear power station of the 1,000-MW class in Switzerland. The gross rated output was increased from 970 MW in the original plans twice by the developers (1992 to 990 MW and again in 1996 to 1020 MW).

The heart of the power station is a Pressurized water reactor built by a company that is now Framatome ANP with 3,002 MW of thermal power. The reactor core has 177 fuel assemblies with 205 fuel rods each, which consist of enriched uranium oxide or MOX fuel elements (uranium plutonium mixing oxide fuel elements with a portion of fissile plutonium).

The cooling is done with water from Beznau I, II and mill mountain and not directly with river water. It uses a 150 meter high natural circulation wet cooling tower, so that the Aare River has a smaller burden.

The nuclear power station at Gösgen annually generates about 8 thousand million kilowatt hour, which corresponds to approximately 15% of Swiss demand. It cost 6.30 Rappen (approximately 6 US cents) to produce a kilowatt hour in 1980. This cost was reduced by various projects in 2001 to 4.07 Rappen (approximately 4 US cents).

In the power station Gösgen there are approximately 400 full time workers. The owners of the power station are the Aare Tessin AG electric company (Atel) with 40%, the northeastSwiss power stations with 25%, the Central Swiss power stations with 12.5%, the city Zurich (EWZ) with 15% and the city Berne with 7.5 per cent. Atel is responsible for management.