Gorleben Castor diary

Diet Simon 07.11.2004 16:22 Themen: Atom
The Castor train is stopped near Avricourt, no reason known yet. There’s strong police presence along the railway line from Gimbsheim c. 30 km south of Lauterbourg, more than for previous transports. Activists have corrected their earlier information about the contents of the Castors. They now say waste fused in glass is as dangerous as spent fuel rods. See note on “false freight declared” below.  http://www.castor-stoppen.de,  http://neckarwestheim.antiatom.de,  http://www.castor.de. Phillip Hofmeister and Eric Tschöp.
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Because of the false freight documentation (see below) a citizen has filed a complaint to German customs at Saarbrücken.

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Since 2 pm a railway line stroll has been in progress from S-Bahnhof Maximiliansau-West (Wörth / Karlsruhe) towards Lauterbourg.
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1:53 pm In Nancy the Castor train was held up for three hours by two young people chaining themselves to the railbed. It’s now three hours late and is expected at the Franco-German border this afternoon. Activists from all over France were at the action. The two people who chained themselves and 15 to 20 others were arrested by the French police.

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11:15 am About 25 km south of Nancy the train stopped in front of a chemicals plant of Rhône-Poulenc. Two young people were chained through a pipe under the rails, 13 other people took part. About 60 people demonstrated at Nancy railway station.


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Splietau, near Gorleben – More than 60 Greenpeace youngsters from Germany, France, the USA and Switzerland demonstrated for a future with only regenerative energy sources. Splietau is a village on one of the possible road routes to Gorleben from the Dannenberg railhead. The youngsters are taking part in the international Greenpeace youth campaign, "SolarGeneration". “We young people are not the final repository of the problems today’s adults can’t get a grip on,” said 16-year-old Julia Lingenfelder from Cologne.  http://www.mysan.de/article25352.html. Press spokeswoman Ortrun Albert is reachable on location at 0171-8781 184.

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11:23 Nancy. The Castor train has stopped. It is still unclear whether people have chained themselves to something. 0160 - 992 181 52, fax: 012 12 - 579 235 490.

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Several hundred people demonstrated in Pirmasens, southwest Germany, against the consignment to the village of Gorleben where the waste will be “interim”-stored in a concrete hall. More at  http://gruppen.greenpeace.de/kaiserslautern/ak041106.html. High-resolution photos from 0170 / 67 38 634.


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A superior court in Lüneburg has forbidden demonstrations along the route in the wider area of Gorleben. The Oberverwaltungsgericht (OVG) Lüneburg overturned a ruling by a lower court that quashed a general ban issued by the regional government authority. The OVG upheld the assembly ban of the Bezirksregierung Lüneburg (file 11 ME 322/04), saying said that during the Castor transport there is a “police emergency”. For the legal mumbo jumbo in German see  http://www.lawchannel.de/index2_full.php?feed=11390.

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The train carrying the 12 Castor caskets left Valognes, northern France, at 9.05 pm. Saturday. It consists of two diesel locomotives (green), two passenger carriages, 12 Castor waggons, another passenger carriage, another diesel locomotive (green).

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A French activist,  Jean-Yvon.Landrac@gmx.net, has reported to activists in southwest Germany that the train appears to be using false freight papers (picture at  http://de.indymedia.org/2004/11/97626.shtml) downplaying the intensity of the radioactivity. He says he’s trying to find someone in the safety authorities to have the train stopped legally. The caskets are labelled "combustibles usés" (spent fuel elements), whereas the correct labelling for the glass-encased waste of this consignment has to be "DHA" (Déchets hautement actifs – highly active waste). Because the labelling is false, Landrac writes, railway staff can call an "avis d'alerte" (warning) which would stop the train until matters were cleared up. Landrac needs to find someone available at the CSHCT (Commission de Sécurité, d'Hygiène et des Conditions de Travail) but thought it was doubtful Saturday or Sunday. The French activists say spent fuel contains only 5% highly radioactive waste, whereas glass-fused waste is 100% highly active. That means the danger of this consignment is vastly greater than officially declared. German activists allege this is deliberate to conceal the extent of the threat. The French activists report that the transport is rolling through France
practically unguarded. "We could even have climbed aboard," said one, "under these circumstances a terrorist attack would have been easy - with unimaginable consequences." A photo of the freight papers can be downloaded at www.castornix.de. Jean-Yvon Landrac, Réseau "Sortir du nucléaire", Tel./Fax: 00 33 2 99 77 31 70, mobile 00 33 6 99 56 29 67.

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Anti-nuclear activists report more people, more tractors and apparently more courage and rage opposing this year’s consignment. A post at  http://de.indymedia.org/2004/11/97546.shtml says a start-up rally in nearby Dannenberg, the railhead, has exceeded all expectations. It claims between 5,000 and 6,000 protesters – more than last year. Most mainstream media agree with the figure. The number is even being used by the police – who’re also in the county in their thousands. Organisers had said earlier they’d be satisfied with 3,000. “It appears that against all expectations the resistance is growing again,” says the post. Pictures at  http://de.indymedia.org/2004/11/97571.shtml. More pictures and information also at  http://de.indymedia.org/2004/11/97607.shtml.
People are moving into resistance camps in south Germany and the Gorleben area and preparing for the rail and truck consignment.

In recent weeks and months police actions in previous nuclear waste transports were often criticised by courts. Headlines indicate the trend: “Police act illegally”, “Police action illegal again,” “Police action again criticised”, “Inhuman encirclement” or “Castor opponents released too late” (sourced from the local ELbe-Jeetzel Zeitung newspaper).

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About 150 people demonstrated at Wiesental train station near the Philippsburg atomic power station Saturday afternoon. Despite a ban, they crossed the transport route, tolerated by police, although they took down some names. Karlsruhe county has banned demonstrations in a 100-metre wide corridor along the transport route. Activists see good chances of getting the ban overturned, as happened to a similar one issued in Lüneburg and overturned by the administrative court there. “The fact that police tolerated our infringement shows how senseless the ban is – it was just meant to intimidate anti-nuclear activists,” said local organisers. A stroll is planned along the rails on Sunday, in the direction the Castor train will be coming from. More information from.  http://www.castor-stoppen.de,  http://neckarwestheim.antiatom.de or  http://www.castor.de, Phillip Hofmeister and Eric Tschöp, mobile 0160 - 992 181 52, fax: 012 12 - 579 235 490, e-mail:  presse-sw@gmx.de,  http://www.castor-stoppen.de.

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Warm accommodation, vegan meals and up to date information are offered to visiting activists by the Hitzacker-Camp am See, open since Thursday 4 November. It’s on the "Seewiese" by the Archäologisches Zentrum in Hitzacker. Accommodation is in heated tents or with host families in Hitzacker. Children welcome – there are some special events for them and there’s a playground right next door. e-mail:  camp-hitzacker@gmx.de, homepage:  http://www.castorgruppehitzacker.tk, address: "Seewiese" Hitzacker, phone: 05862 – 941409.

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Hundreds of people took part in demonstrations by school pupils on Friday. In nearby Lüneburg it was even c. 1,000 (pictures and more information about the Lüneburg action at  http://de.indymedia.org/2004/11/97523.shtml). In Lüchow, the administrative centre of Lüchow-Dannenberg county, where Gorleben is located, police were attacked with eggs. Police have to expect more massive resistance the closer the transport gets to Gorleben.  http://de.indymedia.org/2004/11/97514.shtml

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A policeman’s hand was injured in a demonstration involving farm tractors on Friday. Police blame demonstrators, while the anti-nuclear civic action group in Luechow, BI, says the policeman was careless. It also rejected police allegations that activists injured two police horses, saying the riders forced them to trot on a railway bridge, causing them to slip and fall on its metal plates.  http://de.news.yahoo.com/041105/12/4a6q1.html

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Near the Dutch border, at Gronau, the site of Germany's only uranium enrichment plant (  http://germany.indymedia.org/2004/09/93964.shtml), German and Dutch anti-nuclear activists will be watching out for trains that may be taking depleted uranium to Rotterdam for onshipment to Russia. The activists think the operators may try to use the Gorleben activities as cover. Legal action by Dutch activists has stopped expansion of a Urenco sister plant at Almelo and this success is to be discussed at meetings in Gronau.  http://de.indymedia.org/2004/11/97508.shtml

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The Greens’ youth wing is calling for large numbers of people to take part in non-violent resistance against the transport.  http://www.pressrelations.de/index.cfm?start_url=http%3A//www.pressrelations.de/search/release.cfm%3Fr%3D173126%26style%3D

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The entire village of Metzingen near Gorleben has declared itself a resistance camp. An info point opened up Friday afternoon. Camp-Tel: 0162 - 886 35 94. Directions on how to get there and more information at  http://goehrde.plentyfact.net/ Homepage::  http://goehrde.plentyfact.net

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The Lower Saxony environment ministry says “extensive radiation measurements will again take place” of the transport “to protect the population and the accompanying personnel”.  http://www.pressrelations.de/index.cfm?start_url=http%3A//www.pressrelations.de/search/release.cfm%3Fr%3D173119%26style%3D

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BUND, the German section of Friends of the Earth International, has called on the government to table a final repository law before the end of the year. Two legislative periods had passed without progress in searching for a final nuclear waste dump and things hadn’t advanced since the Social Democrat Greens coalition took power, BUND said.  http://www.mysan.de/article25169.html

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Civic action groups in the state of Lower Saxony, where Gorleben is located, have challenged the legality of the transports. Their joint media release is at  http://de.indymedia.org/2004/11/97411.shtml.

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Salt deposits like the one in Gorleben are unsuitable for storing nuclear waste, say experts. Geophysicist Nikolai Gestermann explained to the «Berliner Zeitung» newspaper that because salt is lighter than the sand and clay layers above it, it presses upwards – comparable to an air bubble in honey. “In my view a salt deposit is therefore unsuitable for an atomic waste repository that has to be safe for hundreds of thousands of years.”  http://de.news.yahoo.com/041106/336/4a75a.html Anti-nuclear activists allege that German federal and regional governments and the nuclear industry are planning to use the Gorleben salt deposit as a final dump regardless, although exploratory mining of it has been stopped after scientific advice. Earlier studies showed the Gorleben salt plug to have contact with ground water, posing the danger of contaminating drinking water supplies if nuclear waste is put into it. The activists say every waste consignment into the “interim storage” hall in Gorleben, where the waste is to stay for 40 years, makes permanent storage in the salt more likely. See on this  http://www.berlinonline.de/berliner-zeitung/tagesthema/392695.html and  http://www.taz.de/pt/2004/11/06/a0151.nf/text.ges,1
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Ergänzungen

Demonstrant von CASTOR-Zug getötet

hvm 07.11.2004 - 17:22
"The Castor train is stopped near Avricourt, no reason known yet."

Für die, die's noch nicht mitbekommen haben: Der Zug stoppt(e?) dort, nachdem er einem 23jährigen Blockierer beide Beine abgefahren hat. Der Demonstrant starb auf dem Weg ins Krankenhaus.

 http://www.castor.de/ticker/index.html
 http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,326854,00.html
 http://www.tagesschau.de/aktuell/meldungen/0,1185,OID3772174_NAV_REF1,00.html

Minister promises study of three other sites

Diet Simon 15.11.2004 - 11:05
Further to the call by BUND (above) for the German government to table a final repository law before the end of the year, the environment minister, Jürgen Trittin, has promised to have at least three alternative sites to Glorleben investigated.

But at a conference of his Greens party, facing an election soon in Schleswig-Holstein state, Trittin left open when the planned final repository law is to pass through parliament.

Trittin said the Gorleben salt deposit was chosen years ago as the repository for tactical reasons because it was situated at the border between the two Germanies - former communist East Germany and capitalist West Germany.

"What was done there went beyond exploration (of the salt). Under the aspect of atomic law, Gorleben is nothing but an illegal construction," Trittin said.