Three casks of nuclear waste left the Neckarwestheim nuclear power plant this morning. They will travel by sea to Barrow-in-Furness in Cumbria and then be taken by train to the reprocessing plant at Sellafield. Hundreds of protesters have tried to block the shipment on its way from the power plant to the nearby railway station of Walheim. Further protests are expected.

This shipment is only the beginning. Almost 1,000 tonnes of German nuclear waste - about 200 flasks - are due to be delivered to Sellafield over the next four years - before July 2005.

The reprocessing plant at Sellafield is one of the largest sources of radioactive emissions into the environment in the whole of Europe. "With every gram of nuclear waste that leaves Germany for Sellafield," says Greenpeace nuclear campaigner, Pete Roche "the Irish Sea becomes a bit more heavily radioactively contaminated."

"The public must feel they've been taken for a ride," says Roche "the German government says it is opposed to reprocessing, and wants to see an end to discharges of radioactive waste into the Irish Sea from Sellafield, yet now here they are giving two fingers to the Irish and Scandinavian countries that suffer from the pollution, as well as the British public."

"Green environment minister Mr Trittin has given his consent for German nuclear companies to dump their radioactive waste at Sellafield, rather than storing it themselves - perfectly feasible alternative" says Roche. "Trittin is helping the German nuclear industry perpetrate one of the greatest environmental crimes of our time."

Just four years ago the former conservative government of Germany stopped all transports of nuclear waste in Germany and to reprocessing at La Hague (France) and Sellafield (Cumbria) because of radioactive contamination of the containers.

More information on Sellafield is available at:  http://www.corecumbria.co.uk and  http://www.greenpeace.org.uk