Protests in store as nuclear fuel train reaches northern Germany

Nov 12, 2006, 14:45 GMT

Gorleben, Germany - A trainload of spent nuclear fuel reached northern Germany early Sunday as wind, rain and hail put a damper on protests near Germany's main storage facility for the fuel.

The route for the trip, which began at a nuclear reprocessing factory in France, was kept secret, but the train was sighted in the northern city of Hanover, only 100 kilometres short of journey's end.

The 12 containers of waste were set to be taken off the train Sunday and moved by truck to the storage site at Gorleben. As with nine preceding waste-transport operations down the years, the anti- nuclear movement said it would block the road with sit-ins.

The confrontation has become a ritual. Late Saturday, a protester handed a pistol back to a policeman who dropped it during one clash close to Gorleben, police confirmed. A protest spokesman said doing so was a symbolic gesture against force.

Some 16,000 police were assigned to protect the railtracks and road, but police said there had been little disruption on the rail part of the journey through Germany. The train had been delayed on Friday in France by protesters swarming onto the tracks.

Two years ago a man was killed in France when he lay on the track and a laden nuclear train was unable to stop in time.

The spent fuel, from German nuclear power stations, has been stabilized in pellets of glass and packed inside a type of storage container known as a 'castor.' A warehouse at Gorleben already contains 68 castors of the high-grade radioactive waste.

Germany is considering whether to sink them down an old salt mine nearby or to build a long-term waste dump somewhere else.

The 12 castors were to be unloaded Monday from the train and hauled the last few kilometres to Gorleben by truck. Thousands of demonstrators gathered Saturday in Gorleben to demand the closure of all nuclear power stations and the end of all waste transport.