Niederzier

Hambach Forest (German: Hambacher Wald, Hambacher Forst (German pronunciation: [ˈhambaxɐ ˈfɔʁst] ), Bürgewald, Die Bürge) is an ancient forest located near Buir in North Rhine-Westphalia, western Germany, between Cologne and Aachen. It was planned to be cleared as part of the Hambach surface mine by owner RWE AG. There were protests and occupations from 2012 against this, and in 2020 a law was passed to preserve it.

The Tagebau Hambach is a large open-pit coal mine (German: Tagebau) in Niederzier and Elsdorf, North Rhine–Westphalia, Germany. It is operated by RWE and used for mining lignite. The mine is on the site of the ancient Hambach Forest, which was purchased by RWE in 1978. The company then cut most of the forest down and cleared it to mine. Only 10% of the forest area remains. RWE planned to clear half of the remaining area between 2018 and 2020. This plan was met with massive protests in the autumn of 2018 and was temporarily stopped in October 2018 by the supreme administrative court of North Rhine–Westphalia (Oberverwaltungsgericht für das Land Nordrhein-Westfalen).Begun in 1978, the mine's operation area currently (as of end of 2017) has a size of 43.8 km2, with the total area designated for mining having a size of 85 km2. It is the deepest open pit mine with respect to sea level: the bottom of the pit, with up to 500 metres (1,640 ft) from the surface, is 299 metres (981 ft) below sea level, the deepest artificially made point in North Rhine–Westphalia.

Bagger 293, previously known as the MAN TAKRAF RB293, is a giant bucket-wheel excavator made by the German industrial company TAKRAF, formerly an East German Kombinat.It owns and shares some records for terrestrial vehicle size in the Guinness Book of Records. Bagger 293 was built in 1995, one of a group of similar sized 'sibling' vehicles such as the Bagger 281 (built in 1958), Bagger 285 (1975), Bagger 287 (1976), Bagger 288 (1978), and Bagger 291 (1993). It is used in a brown coal mine near Hambach in Germany. It is called Bagger 293 by its current owner, RWE Power AG (the second-largest energy producer of Germany). It was called RB293 by its former owner, the brown coal company Rheinbraun, which in 1932 became a subsidiary of RWE. During an internal reshuffle in 2003 it merged with another daughter company to form RWE Power AG. Manufacturer TAKRAF generally refers to it as an excavator of the type SRs 8000.

The AVR reactor (German: Arbeitsgemeinschaft Versuchsreaktor) was a prototype pebble-bed reactor, located immediately adjacent to Jülich Research Centre in West Germany, constructed in 1960, grid connected in 1967 and shut down in 1988. It was a 15 MWe, 46 MWt test reactor used to develop and test a variety of fuels and machinery. The AVR was based on the concept of a "Daniels pile" by Farrington Daniels, the inventor of pebble bed reactors. Rudolf Schulten is commonly recognized as the intellectual father of the reactor. A consortium of 15 community electric companies owned and operated the plant. Over its lifetime the reactor had many accidents, earning it the name "shipwreck." From 2011 to 2014, outside experts examined the historical operations and operational hazards and described serious concealed problems and wrongdoings in their final 2014 report. For example, in 1978 operators bypassed reactor shutdown controls to delay an emergency shutdown during an accident for six days. In 2014 the JRC and AVR publicly admitted to failures. Its decommissioning has been exceptionally difficult, time-consuming and expensive. Since the original operators were overwhelmed by the effort, government agencies took over dismantling and disposal. In 2003 the reactor and its nuclear waste became government property. The temporary storage of 152 casks of spent fuel has been a controversy since 2009. The approval expired in 2013, because stress tests could not sufficiently demonstrate safety; no permanent solution has been reached. Since 2012 plans to export the casks to the United States have been considered due to the extremely high disposal expenses. In 2014, a massive concrete wall to protect against terrorist plane crashes was to be built. On July 2, 2014, the Federal Environment ministry issued an evacuation order for the temporary storage.AVR was the basis of the technology licensed to China to build HTR-10 and the HTR-PM, which became operational in 2021.

Arnoldsweiler is a village in Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany. It is part of the town Düren, situated between Cologne and Aachen. Its population was 3,185 in 2017.

The Sophienhöhe (301.8 m AMSL) is the largest artificial hill worldwide, created by surface mining at the open cast lignite mine Tagebau Hambach operated by RWE Power AG in Düren (district), North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany.

The Ernst Ruska-Centre for Microscopy and Spectroscopy with Electrons (ER-C) is an institute located on the campus of Forschungszentrum Jülich belonging to the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres. It comprises three divisions: ER-C-1 “Physics of Nanoscale systems”, ER-C-2 “Materials Science and Technology” and ER-C-3 “Structural Biology”. Within the framework of a competence platform governed jointly by Forschungszentrum Jülich and RWTH Aachen University, the ER-C operates a national and international user facility that provides access to state-of-the-art instruments, methods and expertise to universities, research institutions and industry. The ER-C's main purposes are fundamental research in electron microscopy, focusing on method development and applications of high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) and scanning-transmission electron microscopy (STEM) in physics, chemistry and biology.

Forschungszentrum Jülich (FZJ) is a national research institution that pursues interdisciplinary research in the fields of energy, information, and bioeconomy. It operates a broad range of research infrastructures like supercomputers, an atmospheric simulation chamber, electron microscopes, a particle accelerator, cleanrooms for nanotechnology, among other things. Current research priorities include the structural change in the Rhineland lignite-mining region, hydrogen, and quantum technologies. As a member of the Helmholtz Association with roughly 6,800 employees in ten institutes and 80 subinstitutes, Jülich is one of the largest research institutions in Europe. Forschungszentrum Jülich’s headquarters are located between the cities of Aachen, Cologne, and Düsseldorf on the outskirts of the North Rhine-Westphalian town of Jülich. FZJ has 15 branch offices in Germany and abroad, including eight sites at European and international neutron and synchrotron radiation sources, two joint institutes with the University of Münster, Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), and Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB), and three offices of Project Management Jülich (PtJ) in the cities of Bonn, Rostock, and Berlin. Jülich cooperates closely with RWTH Aachen University within the Jülich Aachen Research Alliance (JARA).The institution was established on 11 December 1956 by the state of North Rhine-Westphalia as a registered association before it was renamed Nuclear Research Centre Jülich in 1967. In 1990, its name was changed to “Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH”.

Düren (German pronunciation: [ˈdyːʁən]) is a Kreis (district) in the west of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. Neighboring districts are Heinsberg, Neuss, Rhein-Erft-Kreis, Euskirchen and Aachen.

Merzenich is a railway station situated at Merzenich, Kreis Düren in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia on the Cologne–Aachen railway. It opened on 29 April 2003 with the S-Bahn tracks. It has an island platform and a large commuter parking area. It is served by Rhine-Ruhr S-Bahn lines S13 between Sindorf or Düren and Troisdorf and by S19 between Düren and Hennef (Sieg), Blankenberg (Sieg), Herchen or Au (Sieg). Together these provide two services an hour to Cologne on weekdays and Saturdays and once an hour on Sundays and public holidays. It is classified by Deutsche Bahn as a category 5 station.

Düren station is located to the north of the centre of Düren and is the largest station in the city and the district of Düren. It is located at the intersection of the Cologne–Aachen high-speed line with the lines to Linnich, Heimbach and Euskirchen. Until 1992 it was also connected to the Erft Railway. The train is served by Regional-Express, Regionalbahn and S-Bahn trains. It is the terminus of line S19 Rhine-Ruhr S-Bahn. The station was opened on 1 September 1841 by the Rhenish Railway Company on its original line from Cologne to Belgium.

Gürzenicher Bach is a river of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It flows into the Rur near Düren.