Castor: "Impatience and resistance are growing"

xxxxx 12.11.2003 14:06 Themen: Atom
Concluding statement by the Luechow-Dannenberg Civic Action Initiative for Environmental Protection

“The impatience is growing and so is the resistance against the nuclear get-out rhetoric of the environment minister”

- that in a nutshell is the evaluation by the Luechow-Dannenberg Civic Action Initiative for Environmental Protection (BI Umweltschutz Lüchow-Dannenberg) of the growing protest against transportation of highly radioactive nuclear waste to the Wendland area (Gorleben).
Already on Saturday 6,000 people had gathered on a field near Splietau for a prelude demonstration; in the days leading up to the transport thousands were active along the route despite demonstration bans. This year’s train carrying 12 Castor containers arrived in Dannenberg more than five hours late. Many times people chaining themselves to or blocking the railway tracks upset the schedule. In the night from Tuesday to Wednesday alone between 2,000 and 2,500 people blocked roads.

With a mixture of culture and politics the Gorleben activists spent weeks in a “Castoral Rural Party”. Film nights, concerts, webcam cats and many other activities did not obscure, however, that protest and resistance were in the foreground in the Wendland area. Especially noticeable was the positive mood among demonstrators and the influx of young people. In the nuclear state, France, there was also a chain-in protest this year.

The BI Umweltschutz complains that police repeatedly paralysed public life in much of the county. Like the attack on the Free School last year, this year the besieging of the church plot in Langendorf has turned up the heat. In its evaluation the BI complains of rough and harsh removal of sit-down blockaders and the over-the-top danger prognosis of the district government. Broken bones and other injuries are intolerable. There was again scandalous treatment of prisoners at the Neu Tramm collection point.

The Gorleben activists were supported by actions by the environmentalist organisations Robin Wood and Greenpeace, including occupation actions on the towers of the “well-guarded” pits of the final storage mine. They demand that Gorleben be given up as a final storage depot. The Trittin administration must finally officially declare the reasons why the Gorleben salt mine is unsuitable, they demand. The search for a final dump with “two skeletons in the cupboard”, i.e. the already licensed Konrad mine in Salzgitter and the allegedly “likely to be suitable” Gorleben salt deposit was not credible. The further operation of nuclear power stations without proof of a final waste storage while waste piles grew was irresponsible and the ending-of-nuclear-power process was halting. The big protest was also meant to set a marker for the coming decisions on the direction of energy policy and for promotion of regenerative sources.

The fact that the number of protesters was almost double last year’s Castor run shows that instead of political action, the conflict is being waged only between police and the population. People are fed up with the “policification” of the conflict.

The BI Umweltschutz is angered particularly by the declarations of the environment minister. It is bad political style to spread only half-truths in response to the Wendland protest. Reference to the closure of the Stade atomic power station is embarrassing because the cost-driven decision would transfer nuclear power contingents to the Brokdorf and Brunsbüttel station and so extend the running time. Overall, the socalled “consensus agreement” between the federal government and the power industry will triple highly radioactive waste production compared to the year 2000.

“If Trittin now points the finger at the Lower Saxony premier Wulff who, Trittin alleges wants to expand ‘the construction of the final dump camouflaged as exploration’, then our demand on Berlin is clear: Stop Gorleben, shut down the nuclear power stations and promote the expansion of regenerative sources.”

Wolfgang Ehmke 0171 - 545 4684
Francis Althoff 0170 – 939 4684
Dieter Metk 0170 – 762 7871
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