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German police clear way for nuclear convoy arrival
Source: Agencies |
November 9, 2010, Tuesday
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Online Edition
Online Edition
A CONVOY of nuclear waste began the final leg of a five-day odyssey from France to northern Germany yesterday after German police cleared roadblocks and carried off protesters trying to stop the arrival of the containers.
After days of largely peaceful stand-offs between anti-nuclear demonstrators and police, trucks with 11 containers of waste left the town of Dannenberg for the last 20 km (12 miles) of the trip to a storage site in Gorleben.
Police said they had cleared the last of close to 3,000 protesters who had attempted to block the convoy, which has been delivering atomic waste to the site for years but has never been held up for so long.
The remaining stretch would take the slow-moving trucks around an hour to complete, according to police, some 17,000 of whom were mobilised to deal with the protest at the weekend.
The demonstrators, who have been joined by lawmakers from the resurgent opposition Green Party, fear the interim depot in an abandoned salt mine could become a permanent dump -- which Greenpeace says would be geologically unsafe in the long term.
They have have also been incensed by Chancellor Angela Merkel's decision to extend the lifespan of Germany's 17 nuclear power plants despite overwhelming public opposition.
Activists slowed the police by locking themselves to objects including pipes and a concrete pyramid.
Opposition to the consignment has been mostly peaceful, as thousands sat down on train tracks during the convoy's rail journey from a reprocessing site in France over the weekend, while others lowered themselves from bridges on ropes.
German Environment Minister Norbert Roettgen has rejected calls to have nuclear operators pay for some of the cost.
Separately, German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung reported the German government was preparing to strike a deal to remove atomic waste from the western town of Ahaus to a Russian nuclear facility in Mayak in the southern reaches of the Ural mountains.
According to the plan, three waste convoys would be sent from Ahaus to Russia with a total of 951 fuel rods, the paper said, citing government officials.
After days of largely peaceful stand-offs between anti-nuclear demonstrators and police, trucks with 11 containers of waste left the town of Dannenberg for the last 20 km (12 miles) of the trip to a storage site in Gorleben.
Police said they had cleared the last of close to 3,000 protesters who had attempted to block the convoy, which has been delivering atomic waste to the site for years but has never been held up for so long.
The remaining stretch would take the slow-moving trucks around an hour to complete, according to police, some 17,000 of whom were mobilised to deal with the protest at the weekend.
The demonstrators, who have been joined by lawmakers from the resurgent opposition Green Party, fear the interim depot in an abandoned salt mine could become a permanent dump -- which Greenpeace says would be geologically unsafe in the long term.
They have have also been incensed by Chancellor Angela Merkel's decision to extend the lifespan of Germany's 17 nuclear power plants despite overwhelming public opposition.
Activists slowed the police by locking themselves to objects including pipes and a concrete pyramid.
Opposition to the consignment has been mostly peaceful, as thousands sat down on train tracks during the convoy's rail journey from a reprocessing site in France over the weekend, while others lowered themselves from bridges on ropes.
German Environment Minister Norbert Roettgen has rejected calls to have nuclear operators pay for some of the cost.
Separately, German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung reported the German government was preparing to strike a deal to remove atomic waste from the western town of Ahaus to a Russian nuclear facility in Mayak in the southern reaches of the Ural mountains.
According to the plan, three waste convoys would be sent from Ahaus to Russia with a total of 951 fuel rods, the paper said, citing government officials.
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