France prepares to send nuclear waste to Germany

["Sandy Perle" <sandyfl@EARTHLINK.NET>]

France prepares to send nuclear waste to Germany



PARIS, March 25 (Reuters) - France will resume shipments of nuclear 

waste back to Germany on Monday after a four-year hiatus, with German 

anti-nuclear activists promising to disrupt the rail convoy once it 

crosses the border. 



Germany banned the transport of reprocessed nuclear material in 1998 

amid concerns over radiation leaks, angering the French who refused 

to accept any more waste until the backlog was taken back by its 

neighbour for permanent storage. 



The two countries finally agreed in January to resume the transports, 

but the matter has continued to be a volatile political issue for 

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's ruling centre-left coalition of 

Social Democrats and Greens. 



More than 10,000 people demonstrated in the north German town of 

Lueneburg on Saturday against the shipments, which will travel by 

train from a reprocessing plant in northern France to a waste dump in 

Gorleben, south of Hamburg. 



Further protests were held on Sunday and they are expected to 

continue until the stocky containers, known by the English acronym 

CASTOR (Cask for Storage and Transport of Radioactive Material), 

reach the German border late Monday night. 



During the last shipments in 1997, the year before the ban, activists 

fought running battles with police. A spokeswoman for the German 

demonstrators said they planned to occupy parts of the route along 

which the waste will travel early on Tuesday. 



The German internal intelligence agency, the Office for the 

Protection of the Constitution, said around 1,000 violent left-wing 

extremists had travelled to the demonstrations. 



Under a compromise many German Greens find hard to accept, German 

Greens Environment Minister Juergen Trittin gave the go-ahead to the 

shipments under a wider deal to phase out nuclear energy in the 

country by the mid-2020s. 



The ecologist party which was in the thick of previous battles 

against the waste, has urged its members not to block the trains. 



"We must take our waste back," German Foreign Minister Joschka 

Fischer told his Greens party earlier this month. 



"We cannot say keep it, it is a generous present from our Red-Green 

government to the French republic...the French Greens would never 

accept that -- rightly," he added. 



However, staunch anti-nuclear protesters say the shipments are still 

unsafe. Cogema, the world's leading nuclear fuel reprocessor, says 

the containers, which are helium sealed and shielded for 

radioactivity, meet all international regulations. 



The first shipment of nuclear waste is due to depart France's Cogema 

reprocessing plant in La Hague on Monday at 6:30 a.m. (0430 GMT). It 

is expected to arrive early Tuesday at the Gorleben storage facility. 





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Sandy Perle                                     Tel:(714) 545-0100 / (800) 548-5100                                     

Director, Technical                             Extension 2306                                  

ICN Worldwide Dosimetry Service         Fax:(714) 668-3149                                          

ICN Pharmaceuticals, Inc.                       E-Mail: sandyfl@earthlink.net                                                      

ICN Plaza, 3300 Hyland Avenue           E-Mail: sperle@icnpharm.com                       

Costa Mesa, CA 92626



Personal Website: http://sandyfl.nukeworker.net

ICN Worldwide Dosimetry Website: http://www.dosimetry.com



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