During the demolition of the decommissioned Biblis nuclear power plant, the first of the huge cooling towers collapsed.
The structure collapsed at 11:29 a.m. on Thursday.
It was not blown up but destabilized with excavators until it collapsed.
The nuclear power plant was shut down after Germany's nuclear phase-out as a result of the Fukushima disaster in 2011.
The facility has been demolished since 2017.
The two pressurized water reactors in Block A and Block B with their four cooling towers went into operation in 1974 and 1976 respectively.