Demolition started in 1994 at Est German nuclear plant remains ongoing.
Lubmin is a small, little-known Baltic resort in northeastern Germany. Scarcely one kilometer, or half a mile, removed from the town’s eastern boundary, several hulking and dilapidated cement bunkers stand flanked by rusty scrap metal. They are the remains of what was the largest nuclear power plant of the German Democratic Republic. Inside, as many as five Soviet-engineered pressurized water reactors once fed electricity into the grid.
Shortly after the 1990 fall of the Berlin Wall, the reactors were shut down. They were deemed unsafe based on Western standards.
Now, 15 years later, a demolition process which began in 1994 is still underway. It is a painstaking job, because although all the nuclear fuel rods have been removed, individual parts of the nuclear plant are still radioactive and need to be laboriously dismantled and stored.
Read the full and fascinating story here.
