<P> German engineering giant Siemens announced a complete withdrawal from the nuclear industry in 2011, as a response to the Fukushima nuclear disaster . Remaining nuclear companies in Germany are E. ON Kernkraft GmbH, Vattenfall Europe Nuclear Energy GmbH, RWE Power AG, and EnBW Energie Baden - Wuerttemberg AG . </P> <P> German publications of the 1950s and 1960s contained criticism of some features of nuclear power including its safety . Nuclear waste disposal was widely recognized as a major problem, with concern publicly expressed as early as 1954 . In 1964, one author went so far as to state "that the dangers and costs of the necessary final disposal of nuclear waste could possibly make it necessary to forego the development of nuclear energy". </P> <P> As in many industrialised countries, nuclear power in Germany was first developed in the late 1950s . Only a few experimental reactors went online before 1960, and an experimental nuclear power station in Kahl am Main opened in 1960 . All of the German nuclear power plants that opened between 1960 and 1970 had a power output of less than 1,000 MW and have now all closed down . The first commercial nuclear power plant started operating in 1969 . Obrigheim, the first grid station, operated until 2005 . (Neckarwestheim .) A closed nuclear fuel cycle was planned, starting with mining operations in the Saarland and the Schwarzwald; uranium ore concentration, fuel rod filling production in Hanau; and reprocessing of the spent fuel in the never - built nuclear fuel reprocessing plant at Wackersdorf . The radioactive waste was intended to be stored in a deep geological repository, as part of the Gorleben long - term storage project . </P> <P> In the early 1960s there was a proposal to build a nuclear power station in West Berlin, but the project was dropped in 1962 . Another attempt to site a reactor in a major city was made in 1967, when BASF planned to build a nuclear power station on its ground at Ludwigshafen, to supply process steam . Eventually the project was withdrawn by BASF . </P>

When did germany build its first nuclear power plant