Despite all the efforts being put into expanding renewable energy sources, large-scale power plants will be essential as part of a reliable energy supply strategy for as long as we can see. Given that nuclear power is low on CO2 emissions and has no competitors when it comes to being operated cheaply, many countries are moving into or expanding nuclear energy to cover their baseload supply. Germany will need its existing nuclear power plants to supply it with cost-effective, reliable energy for many years to come, and the financial power of German utility companies like E. ON and RWE and German design and construction knowhow is helping realise new building projects in neigh­bouring countries. At home, there are many challenges to be met when it comes to continuously updating existing plant. The authors are extensively involved in design­ing, operating and inspecting existing plant, designing newbuilds, doing retrofits and conversions and updating specific nuclear power rules.

We would like to thank Christina Busse and Bjorn Elsche of E. ON-Kernkraft GmbH, Hanover, Frau Jelena Trubnikova and Alexander Fischer, Stephan Fromknecht, Wolf­gang Fuchs, Andreas Garg, Thomas Griinzig, Heribert Hansen, Peter Kretzschmar, Mark Kritzmann, Hamid Sadegh-Azar, Thomas Springsguth and Marco Tschotschel of HOCHTIEF Consult IKS Energy, Frankfurt am Main for their assistance in writing this work. Some text modules were supplied by Soren Miiller and Martin Schafer of the staff of the Technical University Kaiserslautern and Ralf Schliwa of BORAPA Ingenieurgesellschaft. Final editing was by Frau Tanja Volk.

Rudiger Meiswinkel Julian Meyer Jurgen Schnell

1 Introduction