World

Convoy Takes Nuke Waste To Dump

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

March 26, 2001 / 1:12 PM EST / CBS

A shipment of nuclear waste reached a German dump Thursday after a troubled railway trip from France that sparked massive environmental protests, leading to dozens of injuries and hundreds of arrests.

The shipment took three days to make the 375-mile trip across Germany, repeatedly delayed by protesters, including several who chained themselves to the tracks Tuesday. The journey began at a reprocessing plant in western France.

But activists were apparently caught off-guard by the early morning departure of six trucks carrying the 60 tons of waste from the rail depot in the northern town of Dannenberg to the storage site in Gorleben.

Preceded by armored vehicles and a water cannon, the convoy inched along a road to the dump, completing the final 12-mile leg of the journey in about an hour, without incident. Helmeted police ran alongside.

Gathered in the freezing rain, a group of about 30 protesters whistled and waved flags as the trucks drove into the gates of the warehouse in Gorleben.

"I'm depressed," said Martin Schulz, a 26-year-old farmer from the nearby village of Quickborn who watched the convoy arrive. He said he had driven his tractor onto the road Thursday morning, but "I drove on again quickly before they bulldozed it."

Some of the protestors wept as they straggled off in the cold morning rain from the woodland site near the river Elbe, but many said they also felt a sense of achievement.

In delaying the cargo for a day with sit-ins and clashes with police, tying up as many as 20,000 officers in one of the biggest peacetime security operations in recent German history, demonstrators say they are swinging the economics of electricity generation away from nuclear power.

"It has been a great success," a Greenpeace spokesman said. "They have to accept that (it is) not politically viable."

"I'm sorry we couldn't stop it. The police were everywhere," said another protestor, 18-year-old Rangna of Hamburg. But it's been a success. We're making it too expensive for them."

Police estimated their costs at some $50 million.

The final stretch was considered particularly vulnerable to protest, and was the scene of clashes between police and activists during the last nuclear waste shipment in 1997.

"We're surprised it went so fast," police spokesman Holger Winkelmann said. "Our forces were well-rested and did their job well, but the militants were tired out."

There were no demonstrations overnight, and police easily cleared a tractor blockade and an attempted sit-down protest by about 300 activists in Laase, just short of Gorleben, before the convoy could be delayed.

The rail cars carrying the waste were loaded onto flatbed trucks overnight at the heavily guarded depot. Safety inspectors checked each container for radioactive contamination before they set out and found no problems, said Jutta Kremer-Heye, spokeswoman for the Lower Saxony state environmntal ministry.

Spent nuclear fuel from German power plants is sent abroad for reprocessing, but the contracts oblige Germany to take back the resulting waste.

The protesters object to what they say is highly dangerous radioactive waste being transported through Germany, and hope to make the shipments so costly the government will call them to a halt.

The journey was delayed Tuesday as police and medical crews worked through the night to dislodge four protesters who chained themselves to the tracks about 18 miles from Dannenberg's station. Shortly after the train arrived Wednesday, police turned water cannons on protesters who clogged the town's streets.

Police repeatedly charged the crowd and surrounded the protesters' makeshift camp. Organizers broadcast repeated appeals for calm over loudspeakers, while police countered with accusations that the demonstrators had ripped up paving and attacked officers.

Germany's coalition government, which includes the Green Party, says this just-completed shipment of nuclear waste is a vital part of last year's deal with industry to phase out nuclear power by around 2025.

Without facilities of their own, German reactors must send spent fuel to France for reprocessing.

Environment Minister Juergen Trittin, a Green who once led protests at Gorleben, says the shipments are "unavoidable."

Taking a similar tack, Interior Minister Otto Schily, who was himself arrested at anti-nuclear demonstrations in the 1980s, is pledging to bring the full force of the law against anyone using violence to try to stop nuclear waste shipments.

Critics say the government's phase-out of the nuclear industry is taking too long and protestors vow to continue their battle against nuclear waste shipments.

"The police know they'll all have to come back next time," said Manuel Koenig, a carpenter from nearby Wadderweitz, as the trucks rolled into Gorleben. "And we'll be there too."