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Gronau uranium protests in Berlin and Russia
Diet Simon - 15.06.2006 07:00
German environment activists and civic action groups have taken a petition to parliament demanding the closure of the country’s only uranium enrichment factory at Gronau.
They cite dangers created by enrichment and the many uranium transports to and from the plant at Gronau, near the Dutch border. There’s a similar one just across the border in the Netherlands in a cross-border triangular area dense with nuclear industry.
The capacity of the Gronau plant is currently being increased two-and-a-half-fold. It will ultimately be able to supply 35 large power stations with fuel. 17 are currently operating in Germany.
In Berlin the activists protested against the hypocrisy of Germany and other countries demanding that Iran stop uranium enrichment which they’re doing themselves on a large scale.
The groups said they want a “general, worldwide stop to the use of atomic energy”.
The Gronau plant and its counterpart in Holland are operated by the British-German-Dutch firm Urenco. It was inaugurated on 12 June 1986, i.e. just over 20 years ago to the day.
It enriches uranium to be used in power stations. Only about 0.7% of the naturally occurring uranium ore is the splittable uranium 235 isotope; power stations need at least three to four per cent uranium 235.
Before it is enriched, uranium has to be transformed into the gaseous uranium hexafluoride. That conversion is not done in Gronau, but in a factory in France. The enrichment happens in several phases in centrifuges.
Enrichment fudges the in any case vague boundaries between civilian and military use of atomic energy. Highly enriched uranium can be used to make bombs.
This is the intention imputed to Iran, but not to Germany and other states. A side product of enrichment is the depleted uranium used for the armour-breaking ammunition Western states have fired, among others, in the wars against Iraq and Yugoslavia.
Large quantities of depleted uranium are transported from Gronau to Russia. It’s railed to Rotterdam in The Netherlands and shipped from there.
The civic action groups criticise the fact that nothing is known publicly about where it ends up and what use is made of it. The official explanation is that the material is re-enriched in Russia.
But there are doubts about this version, said Udo Buchholz of the Gronau Environment Working Group (Arbeitskreis Umwelt Gronau). He maintains that evidence is mounting that the uranium from Gronau is also used in Russia to make anti-armour ammunition.
The most recent transport of 1,000 tonnes of depleted uranium left Gronau for Russia on 31 May. There were protests along its route in several places in North-Rhine Westphalia state, Germany’s most populous.
Despite the threats emanating from it, the Gronau factory has never been as much the focus of public interest as for example the interim storage for highly radioactive waste in the northern village of Gorleben, where a police force the size of the entire NSW one is deployed for every waste transport.
Media have taken little notice of the resistance mounted by Gronau activist groups.
Opponents have filed thousands of complaints at public input occasions and to courts against the Gronau nuclear fuel factory, there were many demonstrations and cross-border protest camps.
Every first Sunday of the month activists from Germany and The Netherlands meet at the factory gate for “Sunday strolls”.
This Friday an anti-nuclear camp is setting up near the factory, on Sunday a rally and an “inspection” of the plant are planned.
Contact: Aktionsbündnis Münsterland gegen Atomanlagen  atomstopp@yahoo.de
Russian anti-nuclear activists have also protested against the arrival of more Gronau waste in Yekatarinburg (St. Petersburg).
The group says there was strong media interest as the protesters handed a petition to the German consul-general.
The petition says every country should solve its own problems with nuclear waste and not push them on to other countries.
A spokesman for the Russian group Ecodefense said the transports create dangers on railway lines and from possible terrorist attacks.
The shipment which left Gronau on 31 May arrived in Yekatarinburg
on 8 June on the ship Doggersbank. Ecodefense says that the radioactive cargo will be shipped to Novouralsk in the Sverdlovsk region.
Increasing protests against nuclear waste transportation have generated attention from Russian authorities.
The Speaker of the legislative assembly of St. Petersburg Vadim Tyulpanov demanded that the transports be stopped. He called for intervention by the Russian government and said St. Petersburg would investigate what action to take.
"It is shocking that St. Petersburg is being used as a transit point
for radioactive waste from all over Europe. The traffic of such waste
across Russian territory must be stopped," he told the Interfax news agency on Wednesday.
In his opinion, punishment for environmental crimes should be
increased.
"This is under the authority of the federal government but I think that the case involving Doggersbank will stimulate a review of the local laws protecting the environment of St. Petersburg," Tyulpanov said.
The regional state attorney’s office is also investigating illegal import of nuclear waste by Russian firms. A few years ago Russian stopped importing Hungarian nuclear waste because of growing protests.
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