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Dresden-Ahaus: Road or rail? Your choice.....
Diet Simon - 20.03.2004 11:33
Will you accept nuclear waste transport by train? You’ve got a week to think about it. But a transport there will be.
That’s the pistol the national German government, which has a Green environment minister, is holding to the head of the state government of North-Rhine Westphalia in Düsseldorf, which also has a Green environment minister.
Düsseldorf had been trying to stop weapons-grade waste from a communist-era nuclear research centre at Rossendorf near Dresden being trucked 600 kilometres east to a thin-walled storage hall at Ahaus near the Dutch border.
Saxony (Dresden) says it doesn’t want to keep the waste there. Berlin (Environment Minister Jürgen Trittin) says he hasn’t got the legal means to stop the transportation. North-Rhine Westphalia (Düsseldorf) had been saying it refuses to allow them, but appears to be backing down.
Saxony’s intention to truck 951 highly active spent fuel rods used in a now shut down Soviet-designed reactor at Rossendorf near Dresden across the country has sparked lively public protests.
The resistance group "Kein Atommüll in Ahaus" (No Atomic Waste in Ahaus) is horrified at Düsseldorf’s now examining the rail option. Its spokesman Felix Ruwe told North-Rhine Westphalian (NRW) radio, WDR, “With that, the state government has turned from an absolute opponent to a proponent of the transports.” The group would keep up its protests. “We are calling even more intensively for participation in our Sunday strolls on 21 March in Ahaus and Dresden.”
The federal licensing procedure for transporting 18 round containers called MTR-2 has been stopped until Friday to make time to clarify matters.
Rainer Baake, junior environment minister in Berlin, at a hastily called heads-banging meeting of top Saxony and NRW officials, asked the Saxons to consider giving up the trucking idea and considering a single rail consignment instead. He told NRW to examine whether rail transport would be accepted.
Baake could not say what would happen if neither side yields. But one way or another, the transportation will take place. Trittin has made that plain.
Commentators say that out of worry over protests and with view to the high policing costs as well as approaching local government and state elections the NRW government would have preferred no nuclear transports at all.
National environment minister Trittin has been arguing all along that the hall in Rossendorf where the containers are now would not get a permanent licence for interim storage. That left neither his ministry nor its radiation protection agency (BfS) any scope to turn down Dresden’s transport application.
Just before the heads-banging meeting in Berlin, the NRW interior minister, Fritz Behrens, a Social Democrat, had reiterated his criticism that Castor trucking would need several weeks of huge policing input that would “needlessly” tie up personnel. The state premier, Social Democrat Peer Steinbrück, emphasised that the costs of 50 million euros just for his state would be “absurdly high”.
Whereas Behrens and his cabinet colleagues appear to be acquiescing to the rail option, many Greens and especially the anti-nuclear movement insist that transportation is superfluous, dangerous and should not happen.
“Our issue is not the better means of transport,” says the Ahaus Resistance. They argue that the Rossendorf waste could not be “disposed of in an orderly manner”, but in the best-case scenario would have to be safely deposited for thousands of years. And for that the “light-construction hall” in Ahaus was the worst possible option. Resistance would be “massive” either way.
The police trade union argues that because of the current security situation in the wake of the terrorist carnage in Madrid last week, no nuclear transport is possible at this time. For the last Castor transport to Ahaus six years ago 16,000 police were assigned.
On Friday NRW was still making noises that it was insisting on no transports at all from Rossendorf. “There are slow gains in recognition and ground,” said Steinbrück – whatever he meant by that – “we’re working on it.” But Saxony’s interior minister, Steffen Flath, a Christian Democrat, announced that he’s sticking to his trucking demand. Flath dismisses the 50 million euro cost figure as “a cock-and-bull story”.
He alleges that Düsseldorf’s resistance is “politically motivated” and lacks watertight arguments. Flath also rejects Düsseldorf’s contention that after the Madrid terrorist commuter train bombings it could not ensure the security of road transportation of the Castors. Saxony would not apply for rail transportation, Flath said. “The road is the more practicable and safer option,” said a spokeswoman for the environment ministry in Dresden. In any case, argues Dresden, Rossendorf has no rail connection.
Road transportation would cost Saxony about six million euros, erection of an interim storage depot there about ten times as much. Saxony plans to have Rossendorf free of nuclear waste between 2008 and 2010 and says this will cost it 335 million euros.
Düsseldorf says in the aftermath of Madrid its police are stretched. But Interior Minister Behrens gave the assurance they would be able to secure the transports nonetheless. The deputy NRW, Michael Vesper, of The Greens, appealed to Saxony to give up this “nonsense”. But – and get this from a high representative of The Greens! – a “bundled” rail transport of the 18 Castors was “the lesser evil”.
In Saxony, the PDS party, which succeeded East Germany’s communists, and The Greens, both in opposition, welcome the stop in the transport licensing procedure. The PDS say they hope there will be no transports. Safety concerns had to be put ahead of financial considerations, say The Greens.
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