A controversial train carrying a radioactive cargo of nuclear waste crept across eastern France toward Germany yesterday, after switching its route overnight to avoid protesters.
Green activists had attempted to block the train’s route on Friday as it left a French reprocessing plant, but the nuclear power firm Areva changed the route and by dawn it was within 200km of the frontier.
“The train is under surveillance. We don’t want it moving in secret, as Areva seems to want,” said Laura Hameaux, a spokeswoman for the pressure group “Sortir du Nucleaire” (Get out of Nuclear), a network of 875 anti-nuclear groups.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Hameaux said the train had passed through Bar-le-Duc and was headed east toward Germany. Protesters were shadowing it and a large demonstration was planned in the town of Reding, 50km outside Strasbourg.
The group said it would not try to physically stop the train and that it was expected to cross the border into Germany at around 12:30pm.
Anti-nuclear campaigners had planned a series of demonstrations along the original route of the 14-wagon train carrying 123 tonnes of nuclear waste and billed by opponents as the “most radioactive ever.”
Areva insists that the load is not unusual for the industry.
On Friday, protesters chained themselves to train tracks a few hundred meters from Caen station in northwestern France, holding the train up for several hours before it resumed its journey to Gorleben.
Police arrested seven people, while three of those chained to the rails were taken to hospital “because they were burned during the extrication” a police source said, adding that the burns were “not serious.”
The protesters chained their arms inside metal tubes and concrete in order to make it difficult to be released.
“This nuclear convoy, the most radioactive ever, exposes the population to excessive risks. There is a risk to lives in the short term in case of an accident, but also a long-term risk to their health,” the statement said.
The train is headed to Gorleben in Germany’s Lower Saxony after being reprocessed in France. The waste was originally created during power generation in Germany.
Areva spokesman Christophe Neugnot called criticism from groups such as Greenpeace “a smokescreen for anti-nuclear protesters to hide the fact that nuclear energy is taking off again in almost all European countries.”
He dismissed concerns about possible leaks in transit, describing the train as a “fortress on wheels. The containers would survive a train hitting them at full speed.”
Areva has also rejected the “most radioactive” tag, insisting the cargo is not as radioactive as the last load of waste they shipped back to Germany.
About 30,000 demonstrators were expected to oppose the train’s arrival in Germany, where about 17,000 riot police were poised for what could be one of the biggest anti-nuclear demonstrations in years.
The waste convoy is the 11th of its type between France and Germany since 1996. Protesters have tried to block previous trains, but protests over the latest convoy have been boosted in Germany by growing public anger at the decision by German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government to extend the life of the country’s existing nuclear power plants for an extra 12 years.
Areva, the industrial conglomerate and leader in nuclear power, has agreements to reprocess spent fuel from nuclear power plants. The latest shipment of waste was to arrive in the German town of Dannenberg yesterday and be transported the final 20km by truck to Gorleben to be dumped into underground shafts. There are doubts about the safety of the storage following evidence of a high danger of groundwater contamination at the site.
“This year’s transport of nuclear waste will provoke more opposition than ever before,” German Member of the European Parliament Rebecca Harms said. “It’s time that people’s concerns are finally listened to.”
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