October 07, 1997
But by far the strangest attraction is the Kernwasser Wunderland, an amusement hall and congress centre that Henny van der Most, owner of a Dutch amusement park at Slagharen, is busy concocting out of one of the first generation of nuclear energy’s famous ruins: the fast breeder reactor at Kalkar. Eight billion DM look upon you. Another 10 million will soon be added care of Mr. van der Most. When I arrived, he was just leaving with his wife and child in a snow-white helicopter, on his way to another of his many properties. He has just been checking things out at this alienating shell of yesteryear’s tricky political issue. What is left of it, or rather what has been made of it, is probably known to only a few, for the enormous car park is still alarmingly empty. And not just ther car park. Clusters of daytrippers are sitting in the lounge in a cloud of easytune muzak looking vaguely lost. On the terrace, a child is rocking on an electric toy elephant, with the colossus of the cooling tower in the background. Your friendly host (can him Nukie) leads you on an adventurous ‘journey to the core’. You walk past metres-thick walls, cross gigantic control rooms and halls filled with turbines and pumping machinery and travel through kilometres of conduit systems. On the way to the reactor core, you can partake of German specialities.