Anti-nuclear protests at 100 German locations this Saturday
Diet Simon - 22.10.2010 01:30
Opponents of nuclear electricity generation will gather at 100 locations throughout Germany coming Saturday (23 Oct) to protest against the trucking and railing of nuclear waste hither and thither across the country.
Organisers claim that at least 500 additional consignments of CASTOR containers will travel if the operating lives of 17 nuclear power stations are extended, which the conservative-led government plans to do by parliamentary decision next Thursday, 28 Oct.
A Castor container
The protests will highlight the absence of any final waste repository anywhere on the globe as more and more waste accumulates – 450 tonnes a year in Germany.
The 100 demo locations are along routes to be taken by consignments of CASTORS, each of which contains about as much radioactive Caesium as was released into the atmosphere by the April 1986 Chernobyl meltdown in Ukraine.
Berthold Friess, a southern regional leader of the BUND environment group, notes that given the annual production of about 450 tonnes of radioactive waste, letting power stations continue for 12 extra years would add 500 CASTORS.
A north German protest coordinator, Peter Dickel, predicts that many people will take part on Saturday “who for various reasons won’t travel to central big events. On route action day everyone can show that they reject atomic energy with their own means and in their own ways in their neighbourhoods.”
Recent anti-nuclear demonstrations mobilised 100,000 people in Berlin, 50,000 in Munich
From 5 to 7 November 11 CASTORS are expected to move from a recycling plant in northern France to Gorleben in northern Germany, expected to cause thousands of people to demonstrate (see  http://indymedia.org.au/2010/10/16/german-anti-nuclear-activists-to-cripple-railway).
This Saturday’s actions will be along routes from Wörth via Karlsruhe to Gorleben, from Karlsruhe to Lubmin and from Jülich to Ahaus. CASTOR transports are due on all three routes within weeks or early next year..
Andreas Raschke, spokesman for southwest German anti-nuclear groups, says the routes action day serves as preparation for the arrival from France of the Gorleben consignment, which crosses the border in the southwest.
“The nuclear course of the government is whipping up a storm of fury across the country, shown not only by the recent big demonstrations,” commented the Robin Wood activist group. “All over the country new initiatives have been formed in recent weeks to stand in the way of this nuclear insanity of the government.
“There’s strong participation in the routes action day,” wrote their „ Christina Albrecht.
“The atomic waste is carted back and forth and parked in socalled interim storages on the surface. People have understood that this is no solution, so they’re taking personal control of politics.”
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