SNR-300

Fast breeder reactor in Germany, never entered service

The SNR 300 was a fast breeder sodium cooled nuclear reactor built near the town of Kalkar, North Rhine Westphalia, Germany. The reactor was completed but never taken online. SNR 300 was to output 327 megawatts. The project cost about 7 billion Deutsche Mark (about 3.5 billion or over $4 billion). The site is now the location of a theme park, Wunderland Kalkar, which incorporates much of the power plant buildings into the scenery.

In France, CEA and EDF had started to build Phénix in 1968, which was powered up in December 1973. It was a pool type liquid metal fast breeder reactor cooled with liquid sodium and a small scale (gross 264/net 233 MWe) prototype fast breeder reactor, located at the Marcoule nuclear site, near Orange, France. Phénix had to be stopped for refueling every two months. Between 1990 and 1996, it was run sporadically. When the project for the subsequent full scale power plant prototype Superphénix was started in 1986, it was generally felt that no more experimental FBT prototypes were needed. Superphénix, being a prototype reactor, demonstrated reliability issues and had a historical capacity factor of less than 14.4%. Many of these problems were solved over time, and by 1996 the prototype was reaching its design operational goals. The Russian BN 600 reactor is a similar sodium cooled fast breeder reactor, built at the Beloyarsk Nuclear Power Station, in Russia. Designed to generate electrical power of 600 MW in total, the plant dispatches 560 MW to the Middle Urals power grid. It has been in operation since 1980 and represents an evolution on the preceding BN 350 reactor. In 2014, a larger version of the reactor, the BN 800, began operation and reached full commercial operation in August 2016.

In late 1972, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands charged the Siemens subsidiary Interatom to build a fast breeder. The German government wanted to limit energy import, and a breeder facility was required to use the limited resources efficiently as the uranium supply in Germany was limited. The building commenced at the end of the same year. On 20 May 1975, the Council of the European Communities established the Joint Undertaking 'Schnell Brüter Kernkraftwerksgesellschaft mbH' (SBK).