German nuclear waste convoy reaches storage depot
Date: 15-Nov-02
Country: GERMANY
Author: Claudia Doerries
The convoy of 12 containers filled with 1,300 tonnes of reprocessed nuclear waste was the target of anti-nuclear activists for three days. They repeatedly delayed the train by chaining themselves to tracks and disrupting the transport.
The containers had been loaded onto trucks for the final 20 km (12 mile) segment of the journey to Gorleben, north of Hanover, where they arrived at 0621 GMT. The transport began at the French reprocessing plant of La Hague on Monday.
More than 1,000 demonstrators had delayed the convoy by about five hours during the final segment by sitting on the road leading to Gorleben. But police carried the protesters away. Earlier protesters had set tyres on fire on tracks.
"There were some scuffles between police and demonstrators, but there were no major confrontations," said police spokeswoman Michelle Rolof.
Wolfgang Ehmke, spokesman for the demonstrators, said the opponents had nevertheless succeeded in showing the world that the anti-nuclear movement in Germany was still going strong.
"We scored a number of important blows all week," he said. "The resistance to nuclear waste in Germany won't go away."
This week a high-speed train carrying 150 passengers screeched to a halt in Lueneburg, north of Hanover, only 150 metres (yards) from two dozen demonstrators blocking the tracks after two policemen ran towards it waving at it to stop. The train was running at 110 km an hour (70 mph) at the time.
Nuclear power is a controversial issue in Germany, where government and industry agreed in 2000 to phase out all reactors by around 2025.
There are now a total of 32 "castor" containers with nuclear waste in Gorleben. Another 12 containers will be brought to Gorleben each year from France through 2010. From 2005 another five containers will arrive each year from a British reprocessing plant in Sellafield.
The shipments to the Gorleben site have become the object of a ritual confrontation between police and anti-nuclear activists. Some 15,000 police were needed to guard the route last year in the largest peacetime security operation in post-war German history.
Security costs have reached $23 million in past years.
