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Deutsche Welle

Vattenfall admitted that a mistake had been made at the Kruemmel nuclear power station and confirmed that it had fired the plant manager. The Swedish operators said the head of the reactor had broken an agreement with German authorities to install discharge detectors on a transformer.

It was a short-circuit on one of the transformers that caused the Kruemmel plant to shut down last weekend, thus restricting power supplies across much of the city of Hamburg.

Vattenfall has now said it will not repair the electrical transformers, responsible for the supply of power to on-site machinery, but will replace them entirely. As a result, the reactor will not resume operations for several months.

Repeated technical failure

Bildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift:  A 2007 fire put Kruemmel out of action for two years

The latest incident at Kruemmel, just one of many problems that have dogged the plant over the past years, has sparked furious political debate over the security of nuclear fuel technology.

In 2007, a fire in a previous transformer at the site led to its closure for two years. The facility had only been up and running again for two short weeks when Saturday's short-circuit threw it off the national grid once again. 

Social Democrat and Green politicians have turned the incident into an election campaign issue. They are calling for Germany to speed up nuclear phase-out, currently scheduled for the end of 2020.

Call to consumers

Bildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift:  Germans have plenty of other electricity suppliers to choose from

In an interview in Berlin's Tagesspiegel daily, leader of the Greens Renate Kuenast appealed to German consumers to boycott Vattenfall to show their growing lack of trust in the company's operations.

"Vattenfall customers should put nuclear phase-out first and switch to an eco-electricity provider," she told the paper.

There are 17 nuclear reactors at 12 sites in Germany, producing around a quarter of the country's electricity. The then-governing Social Democrat-Greens coalition decided in 2000 to decommission all German reactors by 2020.

Peter Harry Carstensen, State Premier of Schleswig Holstein - where the Kruemmel plant is located - said he would grant Vattenfall "one last chance" to get on top of the problems at the reactor.

"If there is one more incident like this, I will see to it that this power station is shut down," the Christian Democratic politician told Vattenfall head Tuomo Hatakka in Kiel on Tuesday.

tkw/dpa/AP

Editor: Michael Lawton