Joint Convention on the Safety of Spent Fuel Management and on the Safety of Radioactive Waste Management, Report of the Federal Republic of Germany for the Fourth Review Meeting in May 2012

There are currently nine power reactors in operation in Germany. These are exclusively light-water reactors (seven pressurised water reactors and two boiling water reactors whose fuel assemblies are composed of low-enriched uranium oxide or uranium/plutonium mixed oxide (MOX)). With the 13th amendment to the Atomic Energy Act of 6 August 2011 as a consequence of the events in Japan, which led to a reassessment of the risks associated with the use of nuclear energy, the licences to operate the BiblisA and B, Neckarwestheim1, Brunsbüttel, Isar1, Unterweser, Philippsburg 1 and Krümmel plants expired. For the remaining nine nuclear power plants, the operating licences will expire between 2015 and the end of 2022. Another 12 power reactors have already been or are in the process of being decommissioned.
There were furthermore seven prototype and demonstration nuclear power plants operated in Germany, which have all been decommissioned. Two of these, the HDR Großwelzheim, which was fully removed in 1998, and the VAK Kahl, which was also removed completely in 2010, were boiling water reactors using low-enriched uranium oxide pellets (in the VAK partly also MOX) as fuel. Two other reactors, the AVR at Jülich and the THTR at Hamm-Uentrop, were helium-cooled graphite-moderate high-temperature reactors in which the medium- and high-enriched fuel consisting of uranium/thorium oxide particles was enclosed in graphite spheres. The MZFR at Karlsruhe was a heavy-water reactor using very-low-enriched (0.85 %) uranium oxide fuel. The Compact Sodium-Cooled Nuclear Reactor (Kompakter Natriumgekühlter Kernreaktor – KNK II) at Karlsruhe used high-enriched uranium oxide and uranium/plutonium mixed-oxide fuel. The Niederaichbach NPP (KKN) was in operation between 1972 and 1974 as a prototype plant with a heavy-water-moderated and CO2-gas-cooled pressure tube reactor using natural uranium as fuel. Its complete removal was finished in 1995; the reactor was released from regulatory supervision.
There are at present three research reactors (MTR facility BER-II at Berlin; high-flux reactor FRM II at Garching; TRIGA reactor at Mainz), three teaching reactors and one training reactor in operation in Germany.