German Nuke Train Retreats Amid Riot

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

Index:



German Nuke Train Retreats Amid Riot

Norway urges UK to shut Sellafield nuclear plant

Key facts on German nuclear waste shipments

CHRONOLOGY - History of nuclear power in Germany

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German Nuke Train Retreats Amid Riot



DANNENBERG, Germany (AP) - A train delivering 60 tons of 

nuclear waste to a German storage site was forced to retreat 

Wednesday after protesters clashed with police and some chained 

themselves to the rails. 



The buzz of heavy drills echoed through the North German woods 

as police tried to dislodge three protesters who chained themselves 

across the tracks on blankets overnight. The train remained stuck, 

28 miles from the waste dump. 



After sporadic protests Tuesday along the route across Germany, 

the blockade further delayed the shipment's journey to the 

Dannenberg train depot. Once there, the six waste containers are 

to be loaded onto flatbed trucks for the last leg of a 375-mile trip 

from a French reprocessing plant. 



Earlier, police said they had removed all but one protester from the 

tracks, but they then discovered three were chained together. 

Meanwhile, the train backed up a few hundred yards to the nearest 

small-town station for refueling and a crew change. 



Riot police sent reinforcements to this northern German town after 

militants threw stones, fired flares and set a police car afire 

Tuesday night. Police replied with water cannon and baton 

charges. 



Police said five officers were injured in the clashes, one seriously. 

About 600 protesters were taken into custody. The protesters said 

dozens on their side were injured. About 20,000 police were in 

action in Germany's biggest security operation in years after 

protesters turned the last transport in 1997 into chaos. 



Clashes died down overnight, partly because freezing temperatures 

forced the protesters to retreat. 



Demonstrators across the country sought to block the train's 

progress Tuesday by chaining themselves to the tracks. The 

protesters object to what they say is highly dangerous radioactive 

waste being transported through Germany, and hope to make the 

transports so costly the government will call them to a halt. 



Officials expect more clashes during the final stage of the journey, 

when trucks will bring the containers - each with about 10 tons of 

radioactive waste sealed in 28 glass casks - to the Gorleben 

nuclear waste dump. 



``We'll sleep in the open tonight and come back in the morning,'' 

protester Jascha Luedeke, 17, said Tuesday. ``The government has 

got to see how many people are against this.'' 



The approach road to the Gorleben dump was sealed off with 

barbed wire and police vans were stationed at 40-yard intervals. 

Officers on horseback patrolled the nearby forest and heat-sensitive 

cameras were used. 



Throughout the day Tuesday, the convoy was greeted by sporadic 

protests as it chugged northeast from France, where the waste 

from Germany was reprocessed. It took a detour to avoid the 

university city of Goettingen, where hundreds of people briefly 

occupied the tracks. Dozens were arrested along the route. 



German and French leaders agreed on a resumption of nuclear 

waste traffic last January, with the German government saying it 

has tightened safety rules for the transports since the previous 

administration suspended shipments in 1998 because of 

radioactive leaks on some containers. 



Spent nuclear fuel from German power plants is sent abroad for 

reprocessing, but the contracts oblige Germany to take back the 

resulting waste. 



Environment Minister Juergen Trittin, a member of the Greens party 

which has enraged some its core supporters by agreeing to the 

transport, played down the demonstrations. 



``I think we had to expect there would be protests on this scale,'' 

he told SWR radio. But ``we can't leave our trash at our neighbors' 

front door.'' 

- --------------



Norway urges UK to shut Sellafield nuclear plant



OSLO, March 28 (Reuters) - Norway urged Britain to close its 

Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant following reports that 

radioactive pollution along Norwegian shores has increased. 



"We are putting pressure on British authorities to put an end to 

emissions from Sellafield," Environment Minister Siri Bjerke told 

Reuters late on Tuesday. "The Sellafield plant should be shut 

down." 



The Norwegian Radiation Protection Authority said it found the 

concentration of the radioactive substance technetium-99 along the 

country's coastline had risen sixfold since 1996. 



State-owned British Nuclear Fuel (BNFL) has been under sustained 

international pressure to close down its Thorp reprocessing plant at 

Sellafield after a number of safety scares, but so far Britain's 

Labour government has not budged. 



Norway's Labour government now fears that the country's fishing 

industry will be hit by the increases in the emissions of technetium-

99 from Sellafield. 



Bjerke said she brought up the high levels of radioactive emissions 

from Sellafield in a meeting with British Environment Minister 

Michael Meacher in February. 



"And Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg will also address the issue 

when he meets with (Prime Minister) Tony Blair this summer," 

Bjerke said. 



"Norway depends on a clean ocean and a productive coast, and 

the government finds it unacceptable when nuclear waste problems 

are leading to pollution of Norwegian coastal and ocean areas," she 

said. 



Bjerke said current emission levels did not represent any 

immediate health risk or threat to the environment, but that the long-

term consequences remained unknown. "Therefore it is of vital 

importance to use the precautionary principle," she said. 



Bjerke said she was optimistic that British authorities would 

eventually bow to the pressure to shut Sellafield. 



"Although our demands to British authorities have so far not 

resulted in any concrete advances, it is obvious that reprocessing 

of used reactor fuel is faced with an uphill struggle, politically as 

well as commercially," Bjerke said. 



Norway says that traces of technetium-99 from Sellafield have 

turned up in marine life along its coasts ranging from seaweed to 

lobsters.

- ---------------



Key facts on German nuclear waste shipments

  

BERLIN, March 28 (Reuters) - Following are key facts about 

nuclear waste shipments from France to Germany. Anti-nuclear 

activists were blockading a rail transport on Wednesday near its 

destination in northern Germany. 



WHY? 



Germany has 19 nuclear reactors, generating 34 percent of its 

electricity. These use uranium rods which must be replaced every 

three to four years. Under deals agreed with the French nuclear 

processing company Cogema in the late 1970s, German power 

companies send their used fuel to France, where 96 percent is 

recycled as uranium and one percent as plutonium for re-use in 

reactors leaving three percent radioactive High Level Waste (HLW), 

which must ultimately be disposed of by Germany. 



Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's centre-left coalition with the 

environmentalist Greens party, elected in 1998, agreed last year 

with electricity generators, which are privately owned, to phase out 

all reactors by around 2025. 



But in the meantime they generate hundreds of tonnes of 

radioactive waste a year which will go for reprocessing to France 

until 2005, when unprocessed waste will be stored on-site at 

German nuclear plants until a final storage site is chosen. 



WHEN? 



May 1996: First train brings waste back from France to new 

German interim storage site at Gorleben, south of Hamburg. 



1997: Two further trains carrying Castor (Cask for Storage and 

Transport of Radioactive Material) containers holding canisters of 

waste make trip to Gorleben, despite protests. 



March 1998: Last waste transport in Germany before resumption in 

2001. German waste, not reprocessed in France, taken to Ahaus, 

near Muenster. 



May 1998: France halts Castor transports after radiation 

contamination detected on some casks. Germany bans transports. 



July 1998: France resumes moving waste in Castor casks. 



Sept 1998: Schroeder's Social Democrats win power with Greens. 

Pledge to phase out nuclear power. No move to lift ban on 

transports so no further waste taken from France, angering French 

who refuse to take more spent fuel till backlog cleared. 



Jan 31, 2001: Schroeder agrees with French President Jacques 

Chirac to resume transports. Some German reactors had been in 

danger of closure as storage capacity for used fuel ran out. 



March 26, 2001: Train carrying six Castor containers leaves 

Cogema's La Hague reprocessing plant and crosses German 

border after dark. Protesters chaining themselves to the track halt 

train near destination on Wednesday. Some 15 more transports 

are expected at rate of about two a year. 



WHERE? 



Starts: Waste leaves Cogema's La Hague reprocessing plant 25 

km (16 miles) west of Cherbourg, by road for Valognes rail 

terminal, 40 km (25 miles) away. Loaded onto train. 



Border: At Lauterbourg, between Strasbourg and Karlsruhe. 



Ends: At Dannenberg rail depot, between Hamburg and Berlin and 

1,500 km (950 miles) from La Hague, containers loaded onto 

trucks to be driven to Gorleben storage facility, 25 km away. 



Gorleben is a temporary storage plant comprising warehouses. It 

can hold up to 420 Castor-type casks. Exploratory work has been 

done on turning a disused local salt mine into a permanent 

repository for the waste -- Germany has none at present -- but a 

final decision does not have to be taken before 2015. 



HOW? 



Waste is vitrified into a borosilicate glass and placed in canisters 

which are in turn placed in heavy protective containers. The Castor 

HAW 20/28 CG iron containers being used hold up to 28 canisters. 

They stand 6.1 metres (20 feet) tall and 2.5 metres (eight feet) in 

diameter and weigh 112 tonnes. 



Helium-sealed and shielded for radioactivity, they are intended to 

withstand a nine metre drop, heat of 800 degrees Celsius and 

submersion in 200 metres of water. 

- ---------------



CHRONOLOGY - History of nuclear power in Germany

  

BERLIN, March 28 (Reuters) - Energy-poor Germany relies on 

nuclear power for around a third of its electricity but it also has a 

long history of protest against nuclear plants. The following are key 

dates in the history of German nuclear power: 



1960 - West Germany's first industrial nuclear power plant opens in 

Kahl. This plant closes in 1985. 



1966 - Rival Communist East Germany begins operation of its first 

nuclear power plant, a Soviet-designed model. 



1975 - Fire at the East German plant of Lubmin on the Baltic Coast 

almost causes the core to melt down. 



1978 - Communist East Germany starts storing nuclear waste at a 

mine in Morsleben. It is closed in 1998. 



1980 - The Greens, who became a nationwide force with their anti-

nuclear campaign slogan "Atomkraft? Nein, Danke" (Nuclear 

Power, No Thanks), form a political party in West Germany. 



1984 - West Germany begins first nuclear waste transports to 

intermediate-term storage in village of Gorleben -- then near the 

East German border -- amid protests. 



1986 - The Soviet Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster heightens 

German fears over nuclear safety. Surveys show a majority of 

Germans oppose the use of nuclear power. 



1989 - Last of West Germany's 19 nuclear power plants begins 

operation. Germany decides against building its own nuclear waste 

reprocessing plant, relying instead on plants in La Hague in France 

and Britain's Sellafield. 



1990 - Unified German government finishes closing down last of 

eight nuclear power plants in the formerly Communist east. 



1995 - First nuclear waste transports to Gorleben in Castor 

containers (Casks for Storage and Transport of Radioactive 

Materials) from La Hague.  Similar shipments follow in each of the 

next two years, sparking protests. 



1997 - Huge demonstrations meet Castor transports amid biggest-

to-date postwar police operation of 30,000 officers. 



March 1998 - Policeman guarding shipment of nuclear waste hit 

and killed by a train at a time of large protests. Two months later, 

the government halts nuclear waste transports because of safety 

fears over Castor containers. In the autumn, the Greens enter the 

government coalition for the first time. 



June 2000 - Coalition government including Greens agree with 

utilities to phase out nuclear power by the mid-2020s. 



March 26, 2001 - Castor transport from French reprocessing plant 

resumes after government says it is safe. Protesters ignore calls 

by Environment Minister Juergen Trittin, a Green former protester 

himself, to avoid violent confrontation and try to block rail line 

despite massive police mobilisation.



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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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