The structure collapsed at 11:29 a.m. on Thursday.

"It collapsed as planned," said the spokesman for the energy company RWE, Alexander Scholl, on the nuclear power plant site in the southern Hessian district of Bergstrasse while a huge cloud of dust was still moving over the neighboring fields.

For about three hours, an excavator from a Dutch specialist company worked on the last six pillars of the tower in order to destabilize it.

He only collapsed at the last pillar.

There was no blast because of the nearby high-voltage lines and buildings.

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.

The tower that has now been demolished belonged to Block A. Its "twin" is expected to share the same fate in February.

The towers of Block B are scheduled to be demolished next year.

The sometimes monotonous hammering of the remote-controlled excavator could be heard for hours.

After a brief crash, the structure collapsed within seconds.

The approval for the demolition was granted at very short notice on Tuesday, Scholl said.

What to do with the rubble?

In the course of the dismantling, there is a dispute about where around 3,200 tons of rubble should be dumped.

Nationwide there were cancellations from landfills that do not want the slightly contaminated freight from the former power plant in the Bergstrasse district.

The Hessian Ministry of the Environment and the responsible regional council in Darmstadt have chosen a landfill in Büttelborn in the neighboring district of Groß-Gerau.

But there is fierce resistance.

The district, city and landfill operators categorically reject storing nuclear waste on the heap.

All shareholders of the operator are against landfilling in Büttelborn.

"They no longer want to accept this type of waste," said Mayor Marcus Merkel (SPD).

According to a spokesman for the regional council, the operator's statements are currently being examined.

Specifically, it is about 3200 of a total of one million tons of dismantling material that is below a limit of ten microsievert radiation exposure.

According to the authorities, this is not harmful to health, but must be specifically approved.

The rubble is currently being stored on the site of the old nuclear power plant in southern Hesse.

There is also an interim storage facility with casks with highly radioactive waste on the site.

However, the around 15,000 tons of rubble that is now accumulating due to the demolition of the cooling tower have nothing to do with this.

The cooling towers have never been exposed to radioactivity.

"The cooling towers didn't see anything but river water," Scholl said.

During the years of operation, they only served to prevent the water of the Rhine from being overheated during hot summer temperatures or when the water was low.

"The conventional building rubble is processed again," said Scholl.

It could then be used in concrete production or the cement industry.