GERMANY: Massive Protests Against Nuclear Waste

by david Mon Nov 21, 2005 21:30

Monday November 21: at 8.15am the transport reaches Lüneburg while some thousend protestors in the area are on the roads to welcome it on the last 70km.

What happened so far...
At noon, the castor train arrived at the Dannenberg where the castor containers need to be loaded on lorries, before they can make their way to the storage space just south of Gorleben. The lorries can either follow a northern route via Quickborn or a southern route via Gusborn to Grippel. From there the transport will drive via Laase and Gorleben, before turning south to the temporary storage facility. [check maps 6 and 7 for details.
Timeline Monday November 21:
(all times are German local time, that's one hour ahead of UK time)



It is guessed that until noon today about 60 people were arrested.

19:50 At Gusborn a policeman has hurt a farmer seriously while trying to clear the tractors blockade, kicking into his face with steel improved shoes. The farmer was brought into hospital.

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19:20 There are two blockades in Gorleben. One with about 300 people on the road to Laase (west), another one with 400-600 people at the road to Gedelitz/storage faciclity (south). The police is now clearing this blockade, and confiscated a car with a soundsystem.

19:00 So far only 8 of the 12 containers are loaded onto lorries in Dannenberg. About 400 to 600 people are surrounded by police at the outskirts of Gorleben on the road from Laase, the northren transport route. They just got the third order to disperse. (In Germany three orders are necessary before the police can remove the demonstrators.)
On the southern route, the fire in Gusborn has been extinguished, but in Grippel the road is still blocked by a hearse with 3 persons inside. So far the police is calm.

18:36 At Grippel, 2 tractors are blocking both south and north road, at each of them seven people locked on massive concrete blockes.

18:21 Street is burning in Gusborn and more barricades are built. people put spikes on the roads against police cars.

18.14 Burning barricade at Gusborn. Police very brutal.

18.13 A second hearse with locked on people is blocking the road

17:48 At Grippel, six people are locked on tractors blocking the road.

17:41 Nearly 1000 people are at blockades at four different places around Gorleben at the moment.

17:33 In the village of Langendorf a hearse is blocking the street. Inside the hearse is a block of concrete with a lock-on of several people.

17:21 The sitting blockade of x-thousand in Gorleben is cleared, but noone is arrested, therefore people moving to a new blockade.

15:57 The police clears the sitting blockade of x-thousand in Gorleben.

15:20 The police caused a street blockade close to Laase (north route) when three police lorries carrying barriers and a police car tried to take a shortcut. In the side street they were met up a herd of cows, and the leading cow jump one of the police cars.

14:30 The third of the 12 Castor containers has been loaded on a lorry. About 400 people are on the street in Quickborn, on the nothern of the two possible roads between Dannenberg and the storage camp just south of Gorleben. About 200 people are on the street in Gorleben, where the police is trying to keep some of the road free.

12:00 The transport train has reached Dannenberg, the end of the rail tracks, after leaving La Hague in France on Saturday evening.
The castor casks will now be loaded on lorry by a special loading crane (Verladekran). This will take about 6 to 8 hours.

11:45 30 big bales of straw are burning on a street in Harling even though the train has passed already. The smoke can be seen for miles, and the police used water canons to blush it.

11:34The Castor train has reached Hitzacker It is constantly followed by 3 helicopters.

11:04 The transport train has now reached Leitstade station - getting on so slow that it needed 15 minutes to cover about 1 mile (1.8km).

11:00 23 people who were locked to the tracks near the village of Pommoissel (west of Hitzacker) cut loose and arrested. One demonstrator was so badly hurt that he had to be driven off for further treatment.

10:30am People are still blockading the railways at some places. The train has moved about 20km in the last 1 1/2 hours.

10:10am There are now two or three smaller blockades at different places , each about 50 people.

10:00am It is reported that police is using pepper spray against some demonstrators and press people.

9:00am The police dicovered two metal claws "tagged" to the rails, which make a passing of the train impossible and have to be detached by angle grinders.

9.00am About 300 people are on the railway tracks at Hitzacker. Police forces started trying to clear the tracks.


8.55am The Castor-Transport started slowly in Lüneburg, but had to stop again - while still in the station. Police forces are securing the train with water canons and heavy equipment.

by BI LÜCHOW DANNENBERG Mon Nov 21, 2005 19:34

"The Castor train contains twice as much radioactive material as was released in the Chernobyl meltdown in 1986."
News release on 19.11.2005, 4 p.m.

Anti-Castor demonstration near Gorleben: Civic action group lambasts federal and state governments – Lawsuit against demonstration bans with constitutional court

More than 4,000 people, framed by the tractors of local farmers, demonstrated on Saturday afternoon in the port of the small Elbe town Hitzacker against the ninth transport of nuclear waste to an interim storage hall in Gorleben, Lower Saxony. This evening 12 Castor caskets of the HAW 20/28 design containing highly radioactive waste fused into glass are to start out from the plutonium factory at La Hague in France for Germany. Many police checkpoints hampered demonstrators from reaching the assembly area.

Against the background of the coalition agreement signed yesterday in Berlin between the Social Democrats and the Christian Democratic Union the spokesman of the Bürgerinitiative Umweltschutz Lüchow-Dannenberg e.V. (BI, Civic Action Initiative for Environmental Protection), Francis Althoff, said that the new grand coalition did not dare, either, to stop the nuclear plans of the big energy supply companies in Gorleben once and for all. Althoff: “Merkel [chancellor-designate] und Gabriel [environment minister of Lower Saxony] are sitting like two rabbits sitting mesmerised by the big snake E.ON and Co. While those causing the waste are stuffing their pockets with the money of the electricity consumers, with the unsafe Gorleben salt deposit they want to use the cheapest option for a final repository for waste fatally radioactive for thousands years.” Every Castor casket that arrived in the Gorleben interim storage hall inevitably cemented the unsafe salt deposit below it as the future final repository.

Althoff fears the lifting of the moratorium on further exploration of the hollowed Gorleben salt dome agreed in the consensual contract because in their agreement the coalition parties failed to agree on a search for alternative locations and its financing by the power companies.

Althoff explained that because of the yearly restrictions of the freedom of assembly during the Castor transports, the Bürgerinitiative Lüchow-Dannenberg was now filing a suit with the Federal Constitutional Court. On behalf of the Republikanischer Anwaltsverein (RAV, Republican Association of Attorneys) Martin Lemke supported the constitutional complaint of the BI. Lemke: “Arbitrary danger prognoses in connection with Castor transports have for years led to widely spaced demonstration bans and with that to the abrogation of the constitutional freedom of assembly.” Lemke encouraged the protest movement and recalled that in German history the right to demonstrate had always been conquered on the streets.

On behalf of an alliance of north German anti-nuclear groups, Christin Marbs warned of a worldwide boom in nuclear power production. The French activist, Cecile Lecomte (Sortir du Nucleaire) from Toulouse brought greeting of solidarity from the French anti-nuclear movement. She recalled that although no more German nuclear waste was being transported to France, German waste in the so-called “reprocessing plant” in La Hague would for years to come radioactively contaminate the environment there. Demonstrations and vigils along the Castor transport route in France would take place mainly in Rouen, Nancy and the Strasbourg area.

The Castor train contains twice as much radioactive material as was released in the Chernobyl meltdown in 1986. The train is expected some time on Monday in Dannenberg. For the last 19 kilometres to the interim storage hall in Gorleben the caskets have to be trucked on roads. The Gorleben storage hall now contains 56 Castor caskets. Until 2010 60 more Castors from La Hague and after that 20 – 30 containers from the British plutonium factory Sellafield are still to be taken to Gorleben. The waste is allowed to stay in the interim storage hall for at most 40 years. Right underneath it is the salt deposit the power producers want to use as final repository. Tests from 1979 – 1983 showed that the salt deposit is not suitable for holding highly radioactive waste materials.

by Ben Mon Nov 21, 2005 18:29

I think all nuclear facilities should be shut down and I believe that transporting nuclear waste is far too dangerous.

However once a train or any vehicle is outside of a secure facility loaded with waste it should be allowed to pass to its desntination without delay to limit the chances of an accident occuring.

I would especially be worried about Al-Qaida arriving on the scene while a convoy is delayed by protestors and attacking it causing a spill and contaminating innocent people.

Remember the group which were captured in Sydney with the intent to bomb a nuclear reactor.

by s.l. Mon Nov 21, 2005 15:54

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2005/11/328079.html

(background, report, pics, video stream)