(November 23, 2001) On Sunday 11 November, a transport carrying 6 Castor containers with vitrified high level waste left France. It arrived at the interim storage in Gorleben, Germany three days later. Although it was said that the number of protesters was lower than at the four previous transports, a lot of actions and blockades took place and the transport was delayed several times. The author of this article was present during "Tag X5" (Day X5) and gives his impressions.
(558.5343) Geert Bosma - The train with the six Castors left the loading station at Valognes near the La Hague reprocessing plant. That was the start of Day X5 in the Wendland region, where the interim storage of Gorleben is located. For the fifth time, local citizens and anti-nuclear activists tried to prevent the arrival of high level waste in their region.
And again a big police force of 17,500 was considered necessary to escort the transport at an estimated cost of at least DM50 million (US$23 million). The government gets more and more experienced in perfecting its repression. There was a ban on demonstrations in the whole region and people from outside the region were forbidden to stay in the area and got arrested when they refused to leave.
Camping was forbidden and sports halls, which could have been used for accommodation, were sealed. People had to stay with local citizens, on farms and in churches. This kind of non-accommodation policy is a consequence of the new Christian Democrat (CDU) led local government. When the Greens were in the local government the protesters got much more help. In the last local elections a lot of the Greens' traditional voters refused to vote because of the nuclear policy of their party, which is in the national government coalition responsible for the German phase out program.
The local Bürgerinitiative (Citizens Initiative) was warned that merely calling for actions would result in prosecution. In spite of this repression, broad resistance took place throughout Germany, but also in France. The train was diverted hundreds of kilometers to avoid actions that had been announced in several cities on the original route. Nearby Hamburg the train was delayed by three hours when the locomotive received the wrong type of diesel fuel.
Starting on Sunday, blockades with tractors and up to 2000 activists took place in the Wendland region. Even 300 sheep were able to join the blockades when they "escaped" from their pasture and walked to the railway. Though blockades were non-violent, the police used dogs, billy clubs and horses, which resulted in several injuries. 300 doctors and personnel from the local hospital held their own anti-Castor demonstration.
Due to the crash of an airplane in the US New York district of Queens on Monday 12 November and discussions in the German parliament about the participation in the war in Afghanistan, German media paid little attention to the Gorleben protests.
The train arrived at the unloading station at Dannenberg on Tuesday afternoon and continued its last 20 kilometers by truck. It arrived at Gorleben on Wednesday morning. It is expected that the next transport from La Hague will take place in May 2002 with as many as 12 Castor containers.
[This article was translated from Dutch and edited by WISE Amsterdam.]
Contact: Bürgerinitiative Umweltschutz Lüchow-Dannenberg, Drawehner Str. 3, 29439 Lüchow, Germany
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