Activists are mobilising against another consignment of highly radioactive nuclear waste about to be railed hundreds of kilometres across Germany to a storage hall near the Baltic Sea resort of Lubmin. Only in December several thousand people demonstrated in bitter cold in the area, other parts of Germany and France against a Lubmin consignment of four CASTOR caskets from France.
They also expressed anger at the continued operation of nuclear power stations. On 12 February activists will demonstrate in the nearby city of Greifswald, former site of a nuclear power station, against the energy policy of the German government and the four main power companies, Eon, EnBW, Vattenfall and RWE.
People will also protest in many towns along the rail route against the waste train, which will come from a recycling facility in Karlsruhe. Demos have already been notified for Karlsruhe, Halle and Erfurt. In a straight line the distance from Karlsruhe (Lat. 49° 0' 16", Long. 8° 23' 8") to Lubmin (Lat. 54° 7' 0", Long. 13° 36' 0") is 675 kilometres.
We oppose this senseless nuclear waste tourism whose only purpose is to make it appear as if there were a disposal system so as to assure the continued operation of Germany’s 17 nuclear power stations.
We demand immediate shutdown of all nuclear installations and immediate suspension of transportation of all radioactive materials as long as no suitable final repository is ready to operate.
On the day the train arrives in our area, which we call “Day X”, probably 16/17 February, we will again creatively get in the way of the CASTORS. “On the transport day we are counting on people walking towards the train and stopping it at their own front doors,” says Felix Leipold, a spokesman of the local activist alliance, Anti-Atom-Bündniss NordOst.
“We’ll organise beds again for activists coming here to support us and call on everyone in and around Greifswald to contact the accommodation organisers at bettenboerse [at] systemausfall.org to offer sleeping places,” says Sophie Hirschelmann of the alliance.