Gorleben road-breaking attempt foiled
Gorleben, northern Germany – Police say they’ve prevented an attempt to undermine a road with water and make it collapse before a convoy of trucks carrying nuclear waste was due to run on it Monday or Tuesday.
The Lüneburg-based police say they found water-tapping equipment on the side of a road, the Elbuferstrasse. They say the main water supply pipe running along the road was professionally tapped into and pipe branching off it was laid.
That was attached to another pipe, called a “water lance”, leading to the road, which it could have very quickly under-washed.
Police removed the equipment and are investigating dangerous interference with traffic. They argue that even a neautral car passing an under-washed spot could have broken in.
Opponents of nuclear power are suspected. The annual transport of highly radioactive nuclear waste from La Hague in northern France is due in the Gorleben storage hall on Monday or Tuesday.
Earlier in the week high-speed passenger trains on several routes were delayed for hours because locomotives ripped down electric power lines. Nuclear opponents are suspected of throwing hooks over the lines which are caught by the locomotives’ overhead current collectors.
Activists have started a “hot weekend” of protests in the Gorleben area.
On Thursday evening a dozen and a half farm tractors drove into the village of Metzingen to block space where in past years police parked armoured bulldozers and water cannon.
That infuriated people in the “resistance nest” of Metzingen, writes randbild at
http://germany.indymedia.org/2005/11/132893.shtml, which they let out on a police patrol car last year.
“It was subsequently officially stated that Metzingen would no longer be used in this form as a police marshalling point, but obviously people don’t trust that announcement. In an ‘agricultural machinery show’ the usual parking areas in the village were parked full so that no room remains for the police.” More pictures at http://www.randbild.de.
That was attached to another pipe, called a “water lance”, leading to the road, which it could have very quickly under-washed.
Police removed the equipment and are investigating dangerous interference with traffic. They argue that even a neautral car passing an under-washed spot could have broken in.
Opponents of nuclear power are suspected. The annual transport of highly radioactive nuclear waste from La Hague in northern France is due in the Gorleben storage hall on Monday or Tuesday.
Earlier in the week high-speed passenger trains on several routes were delayed for hours because locomotives ripped down electric power lines. Nuclear opponents are suspected of throwing hooks over the lines which are caught by the locomotives’ overhead current collectors.
Activists have started a “hot weekend” of protests in the Gorleben area.
On Thursday evening a dozen and a half farm tractors drove into the village of Metzingen to block space where in past years police parked armoured bulldozers and water cannon.
That infuriated people in the “resistance nest” of Metzingen, writes randbild at
http://germany.indymedia.org/2005/11/132893.shtml, which they let out on a police patrol car last year. “It was subsequently officially stated that Metzingen would no longer be used in this form as a police marshalling point, but obviously people don’t trust that announcement. In an ‘agricultural machinery show’ the usual parking areas in the village were parked full so that no room remains for the police.” More pictures at
http://www.randbild.de.
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Ergänzungen
“Keep iodine handy” advice false
The letter is fake and believed to have been circulated by nuclear opponents. It went to households in several towns along the train route Karlsruhe-Bietigheim-Heilbronn.
The letter outlines the route of the Castor transport and mentions a possible stop at Bietigheim, which would be new.
There’s no danger to the population, says the letter, and people should NOT swallow iodine tablets. But they should be kept at the ready "for the unlikely event of them being necessary”. If that happened, there’d be radio announcements.
Demos have started along the route
The vigil begins on Sunday at 6 p.m. and has been registered to run until 6 a.m., but can be extended because of unforeseen circumstances, e.g. a delay in the arrival of the Castor train. Everyone’s invited. Warm drinks are especially welcome, with frost forecast! Contact atomplenum hannover.
Lüneburg protest details at
Among others: Sunday 1 p.m. meet at Lüneburg railway station “with bicycles for cattle inspection along the railway line to the Wendland. Bring along a lasso”.
Info phone in Lüneburg 04131/48599 manned/womanned from Sunday noon until the transport is in Dannenberg.
As elsewhere, Lüneburg activists on 7 November held a memorial for Sébastien Briat, the French activist killed in France by last year’s Castor train.
CASTOR VIDEO März 2001
France, Dannenberg pupils, Buchholz
that several anti-Castor actions are planned in France. A schedule and contacts are listed.
Dannenberg, in the Wendland: 150 school children demonstrated on Thursday, moving through the town to the crane which will lift the castors from rail cars to trucks. Pictures at
Buchholz & Rotenburg: Vigils to be set up from noon Sunday. German Rail is quoted as saying extensive construction work will be done in coming weeks on the route Hannover - Uelzen – Hamburg so that some goods and passenger trains will be rerouted via Verden - Rotenburg (Wümme) – Buchholz. This makes activists think the Castor train will pass through Buchholz, like it did in November 2002. Activists plan to “occupy” bridges.
What happens in La Hague?
the French activist group Sortons du nucléaire explains what happens technically in the plutonium plant at La Hague in Normandy.
They argue that the air and water in the immediate environment are constantly contaminated. Depleted uranium is kept there for decades, so is plutonium. MOX fuel rods are produced.
The waste taken from La Hague to Gorleben is only a tenth of the volume brought in originally from German nukes. It is nonsense for German government ministers to argue that a treaty forces Germany to take the waste back because most of it stays in France, anyway.
In France there was also a strong anti-nuclear movement in the late 70s but it was “very brutally” repressed. After the death of Vital Michon at a demonstration against the meanwhile abandoned “Superphoenix” reactor in Malville “it was hard for the resistance to keep up the struggle”.
In France demonstrations are planned along the rail route, e.g. in Rouen, Nancy, Hoeheim.
Despite a “military secret” ban, the Castor running schedule has been published.
Restrictions on protest, information sources
For topical reporting by the media that appears relevant to the Castor transport click here.
Click Wo ist der Castor? to find out where it is at any given time. Maps are available here.
“Radio Freies Wendland” (radiofreieswendland,Radio Free Wendland) will broadcast again:
· Lüneburg 95.5 MHz
· Uelzen 88.0 MHz
· Lüchow-Dannenberg 89.7 MHz
Camps
Castorcamp Hitzacker
Widerstandnest in Metzingen in der Göhrde
Past years:
2001 The Castor rolled into the Wendland
2002 Gorleben-Castor 02 – final burial of constitutional rights
2003 Castor time again...
2004 Day X in Gorleben
Police obstruct press
The group has filed an action with a Lüneburg court against a ban declared against a public meeting of journalists on Monday at which media freedom was to be discussed.
It was to be held near the crane that lifts nuclear waste from rail cars to low-loader trucks for the final 20-km run to the Gorleben storage compound.
The event with the motto “Press freedom for the citizens, not just for the police” was to draw attention to increasing controls and domination of media access by the police. The media centre set up in Dannenberg during Castor transports is in a massively secured location, with a view of the reloading installation.
Visitors are checked in the entrance area and some are mot let through, or only after body searches. A spokesman for the Bürgerinitiative says this hampers or even prevents the press work of nuclear opponents.
“All locations with scope for media-effective photos lie in the no-go zone 70 km long and up to a km wide,” adds an attorney for the group.
Francis Althoff 05843 986789 0170 9394684
From Saturday in the BI press car on the “Esso” paddock in Dannenberg:
05861 986527 0171 5454684
Drawehner Str. 3 29439 Lüchow
Tel: 05841-4684 Fax: 3197
www.bi-luechow-dannenberg.de