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1,000 demonstrated in Münster against nuclear power
SOFA - 26.04.2009 04:20
About 1,000 people demonstrated against nuclear power generation in the north-western German city Münster on Saturday (25 April).
Located about 240 linear kilometres southwest of Hamburg, Münster is surrounded in close proximity by a nuclear waste dump at Ahaus, Germany’s only uranium enrichment plant at Gronau and another such plant at Almelo in neighbouring Holland (95 km northwest).
The demonstrators demanded that nuclear power production be stopped immediately.
The local SOFA group says this was the biggest anti-nuclear demonstration in the state of North-Rhine Westphalia (the most populous) since nuclear waste was trucked 600 kilometres on autobahns from Rossendorf, near Dresden, in east Germany to a storage hall in nearby Ahaus (45 km) in 2005.
Münster’s was one of three central demos throughout Germany to mark the anniversary of the Chernobyl explosion in Ukraine and to demand that there be no renaissance of nuclear energy.
Today, Sunday (Germany is eight hours behind Queensland) two more protest rallies are being called outside nuclear power stations at Krümmel (40 km southeast of Hamburg) and Neckarwestheim (170 km south of Frankfurt).
SOFA suggests that a resurgence of the anti-nuclear movement can also be felt in the Münster area.
What had started last November with 16,000 protesters in Gorleben ( http://sydney.indymedia.org.au/search/node/Gorleben ) and continued with various protest actions since then had now also brought considerably more people into the streets in Münster than in recent years, SOFA wrote on German IndyMedia.
“More and more people are realizing that getting out of nuclear power is no automatic process, that the signature of the big power companies is worthless and that the plans to build new nuclear power stations throughout Europe could lead to a renaissance of nuclear power.”
Speakers in Münster included nuclear opponents from Bulgaria, France and Russia.
• Albena Simeonova called on RWE, a German transnational utilities giant, not to build a nuclear station at earthquake-prone Belene in Bulgaria.
• Cécile Lecomte called for resistance against the new type of European Pressurized Reactors being built at Flamanville in Normandy and planned for Penly (building to start in 2012) where it will join an already operating nuke on the English Channel coast.
• Rashid Alimov demanded immediate cessation of transportation to Russia of depleted uranium waste from the enrichment plant at Gronau (26 linear kilometres from Münster), Almelo und France.
A long train is ready to move from the Gronau factory compound to Rotterdam where a ship is waiting to take another load of depleted uranium to Russia. Progress can be followed at www.urantransport.de.
Where nuclear industry works internationally, resistance to it must also network internationally, SOFA wrote.
Several speakers also demanded that the big nuclear companies be dissolved and that the energy supply be converted to renewable sources.
Münster has a population of 270,000, about 48,500 of whom are students. Known as “the bicycle capital of Germany” it has also been voted the most liveable city in the Germany.
 sofa-ms@web.de http://www.sofa-ms.de
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