Multinational protest in Brussels against doubled nuclear spending
Diet Simon, drawing on a media release by Bundesweites Bündnis gegen EURATOM | 25.03.2007 09:10 | Anti-militarism | Ecology | World
The European Union will spend 2,751 million euros on nuclear activities in its research funding from this year until 2013 although at least two member countries, Germany and Sweden, have pledged to drop nuclear power production and another, Austria, has banned it.
The nuclear spending in the 7th research programme is double the 1,352 million euros in the previous research budget.
Protesters from Germany, The Netherlands and Russia heard at a demonstration in Brussels, the seat of the EU, that the billions would be better spent on climate protection, energy saving programmes and renewable energies.
The nuclear spending in the 7th research programme is double the 1,352 million euros in the previous research budget.
Protesters from Germany, The Netherlands and Russia heard at a demonstration in Brussels, the seat of the EU, that the billions would be better spent on climate protection, energy saving programmes and renewable energies.
The demonstrators went to Brussels last Friday to protest against the 50th anniversary on Sunday of the open-ended EURATOM treaty, which regulates nuclear cooperation between the 27 member countries.
“Stop EURATOM!” they demanded outside the landmark Atomium building
(photos at www.tobias-pflueger.de/EURATOM/).
EURATOM is one of the founding treaties of the European Union. It defines its purpose as promoting, coordinating and controlling the nuclear research and atomic power generating industries of the member countries.
"We demand an end to the anachronistic EURATOM treaty! No more EU funding of atomic energy!” said Markus Pflüger of the southwest German anti-atomic initiatives, one of the organisers of the Brussels protest.
Especially now that Germany had the EU presidency and was to host the G8 summit in June it should be urging a really ecological energy turnaround and be opposing resource wars for energy security, said Pflüger, a Member of the European Parliament in Brussels.
After the action at the Atomium the activists supported the handover of 663,000 signatures of individual Europeans and more than 750 organisations demanding that the European Commission put an end to nuclear power production (see www.foeeurope.org).
Earlier, in the European Parliament, the nuclear opponents attended a hearing about EURATOM.
"The spending on promoting atomic power is immense. In the 7th Research Framework Programme fusion energy research will receive 1,947 million euros, nuclear fission and radiation protection 287 million euros,” explained Ursula Schoenberger of a group opposing permanent dumping of weak and medium-active nuclear waste in a former iron mine, Schacht Konrad, near Salzgitter in north Germany.
“The nuclear sector of the joint research centre will be furnished with 517 million, making altogether 2,751 million euros, which is double of the current EURATOM funding of 1,352 million euros in the sixth framework programme,” she said.
Schoenberger’s scientific study is fundamentally critical of EURATOM.
“It has to be publicly scandalised at last that through EURATOM billions of tax revenue are undemocratically moved past the European Parliament to be spent on promoting atomic technology against the declared will of the majority of European men and women.
“All countries that want to leave atomic energy, first and foremost Germany, must get out of the treaty at last.
“Instead, billions could be spent on climate protection, energy saving programmes and renewable energies.” (Link to the study, which is in German: www.tobias-pflueger.de/EURATOM/.)
The leftwing Member of the European Parliament, Tobias Pflüger (GUE/NGL group), who commissioned the study, showed the connection between the neo-liberal EU constitutional treaty agreement including militarisation and the EURATOM treaty.
The 36th protocol amending the treaty establishing the European atomic energy community, gazetted 16 December 2004, refers to the “necessity that the provisions of the Treaty establishing the European Atomic Energy Community should continue to have full legal effect”.
“That is a scandal, because with the acceptance of the constitutional agreement the EURATOM treaty would be doubly secured, once in the original as a treaty in its own right and secondly in the constitutional treaty. That’s another reason to oppose this EU constitutional agreement,” argued the MEP.
Francis Althoff of the group opposing nuclear dumping at the village of Gorleben in north Germany, the Bürgerinitiative Umweltschutz Lüchow- Dannenberg, criticised the suggestion of central “European” final storage of waste.
“There is no safe final storing. Instead of pumping millions into what have been proved to be unsuitable sites like Gorleben in Germany or Bure in France, the nuclear exit is overdue,” Althoff said.
Vladimir Slivyak of Ecodefense Moscow demanded an end to the transportation of nuclear waste from Gronau in Germany to Russia.
“This is irresponsible exportation of problems and risks,” said Matthias Eickhoff of the activist group Aktionsbündnis Münsterland gegen Atomanlagen.
He criticised uranium enrichment at the Gronau plant, owned by German nuclear power producers and Dutch and British interests running similar plants in those countries, calling it the start of the atomic spiral in Europe.
“That’s why we concentrate our resistance on uranium transports,” Eickhoff said. He called for participation in a protest on 12 May at the German-French border railway station Perl-Apach.
At the protest action on Friday near the Atomium (
http://www.atomium.be/HTMLsite/dyn/eindex.html) the activists were costumed as atomic death and referred to the victims of the Hiroshima bombing, the Chernobyl meltdown, uranium mining and the worldwide radiation pollution.
“Fifty years of atomic energy promotion, billions in subsidies for research and expansion of an uncontrollable risky technology are enough! Uranium is finite, its mining damaging to humans and the environment, its transportation dangerous and there is no solution for atomic waste – as well as the daily remaining risk and nuclear weapons danger,” added Dietmar Siefert of an anti-nuclear group in Celle, not far from Gorleben, the Celler Antiatominitiative.
Photos of the action and hearing are freely available at http://www.tobias-pflueger.de/EURATOM/. Contacts for more information: Markus Pflueger, Stop Bure Gruppe Trier: 0049-1727379388 
mail@markus-pflueger.de or Francis Althoff, Buergerinitiative Umweltschutz Luechow Dannenberg: 0049- 5841-4684 BI-Presse@t-online.de.
“Stop EURATOM!” they demanded outside the landmark Atomium building
(photos at www.tobias-pflueger.de/EURATOM/).
EURATOM is one of the founding treaties of the European Union. It defines its purpose as promoting, coordinating and controlling the nuclear research and atomic power generating industries of the member countries.
"We demand an end to the anachronistic EURATOM treaty! No more EU funding of atomic energy!” said Markus Pflüger of the southwest German anti-atomic initiatives, one of the organisers of the Brussels protest.
Especially now that Germany had the EU presidency and was to host the G8 summit in June it should be urging a really ecological energy turnaround and be opposing resource wars for energy security, said Pflüger, a Member of the European Parliament in Brussels.
After the action at the Atomium the activists supported the handover of 663,000 signatures of individual Europeans and more than 750 organisations demanding that the European Commission put an end to nuclear power production (see www.foeeurope.org).
Earlier, in the European Parliament, the nuclear opponents attended a hearing about EURATOM.
"The spending on promoting atomic power is immense. In the 7th Research Framework Programme fusion energy research will receive 1,947 million euros, nuclear fission and radiation protection 287 million euros,” explained Ursula Schoenberger of a group opposing permanent dumping of weak and medium-active nuclear waste in a former iron mine, Schacht Konrad, near Salzgitter in north Germany.
“The nuclear sector of the joint research centre will be furnished with 517 million, making altogether 2,751 million euros, which is double of the current EURATOM funding of 1,352 million euros in the sixth framework programme,” she said.
Schoenberger’s scientific study is fundamentally critical of EURATOM.
“It has to be publicly scandalised at last that through EURATOM billions of tax revenue are undemocratically moved past the European Parliament to be spent on promoting atomic technology against the declared will of the majority of European men and women.
“All countries that want to leave atomic energy, first and foremost Germany, must get out of the treaty at last.
“Instead, billions could be spent on climate protection, energy saving programmes and renewable energies.” (Link to the study, which is in German: www.tobias-pflueger.de/EURATOM/.)
The leftwing Member of the European Parliament, Tobias Pflüger (GUE/NGL group), who commissioned the study, showed the connection between the neo-liberal EU constitutional treaty agreement including militarisation and the EURATOM treaty.
The 36th protocol amending the treaty establishing the European atomic energy community, gazetted 16 December 2004, refers to the “necessity that the provisions of the Treaty establishing the European Atomic Energy Community should continue to have full legal effect”.
“That is a scandal, because with the acceptance of the constitutional agreement the EURATOM treaty would be doubly secured, once in the original as a treaty in its own right and secondly in the constitutional treaty. That’s another reason to oppose this EU constitutional agreement,” argued the MEP.
Francis Althoff of the group opposing nuclear dumping at the village of Gorleben in north Germany, the Bürgerinitiative Umweltschutz Lüchow- Dannenberg, criticised the suggestion of central “European” final storage of waste.
“There is no safe final storing. Instead of pumping millions into what have been proved to be unsuitable sites like Gorleben in Germany or Bure in France, the nuclear exit is overdue,” Althoff said.
Vladimir Slivyak of Ecodefense Moscow demanded an end to the transportation of nuclear waste from Gronau in Germany to Russia.
“This is irresponsible exportation of problems and risks,” said Matthias Eickhoff of the activist group Aktionsbündnis Münsterland gegen Atomanlagen.
He criticised uranium enrichment at the Gronau plant, owned by German nuclear power producers and Dutch and British interests running similar plants in those countries, calling it the start of the atomic spiral in Europe.
“That’s why we concentrate our resistance on uranium transports,” Eickhoff said. He called for participation in a protest on 12 May at the German-French border railway station Perl-Apach.
At the protest action on Friday near the Atomium (
http://www.atomium.be/HTMLsite/dyn/eindex.html) the activists were costumed as atomic death and referred to the victims of the Hiroshima bombing, the Chernobyl meltdown, uranium mining and the worldwide radiation pollution. “Fifty years of atomic energy promotion, billions in subsidies for research and expansion of an uncontrollable risky technology are enough! Uranium is finite, its mining damaging to humans and the environment, its transportation dangerous and there is no solution for atomic waste – as well as the daily remaining risk and nuclear weapons danger,” added Dietmar Siefert of an anti-nuclear group in Celle, not far from Gorleben, the Celler Antiatominitiative.
Photos of the action and hearing are freely available at
http://www.tobias-pflueger.de/EURATOM/. Contacts for more information: Markus Pflueger, Stop Bure Gruppe Trier: 0049-1727379388 mail@markus-pflueger.de or Francis Althoff, Buergerinitiative Umweltschutz Luechow Dannenberg: 0049- 5841-4684 BI-Presse@t-online.de.
Diet Simon, drawing on a media release by Bundesweites Bündnis gegen EURATOM
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26.03.2007 04:12
Pressemitteilung 25.03.07
Gorleben internationales Endlager?
BI-Delegation bei Hearing und EURATOM-Protest in Brüssel
Eine 6-köpfige Delegation der Bürgerinitiative Umweltschutz Lüchow
Dannenberg (BI) nahm anlässlich des 50jährigen Bestehens des
EURATOM-Vertrags vom 22. bis 23. März an einem Hearing im EU-
Parlament und Protesten am "Atomium" teil. Der EURATOM-Vertrag
verpflichtet selbst EU-Länder ohne Atomkraftwerke Gelder für die Förderung
der Atomkraftnutzung bereitzustellen und war sogar im Gespräch, in die EU-
Verfassung installiert zu werden.
Auf Einladung des parteilosen MdEP Tobias Pflüger hielt u.a. BI-Sprecher
Francis Althoff in diesem Zusammenhang bei einem Hearing im Europa-
Parlament einen Vortrag über "Multinationale Endlagerpläne der EU". Althoff
stellte dabei heraus, dass es multinationale Endlager in der EU längst gibt.
Wenn Gorleben in Betrieb gehen würde, wäre es wegen bereits
abgeschlossener Substitutionsverträgen ein internationales Endlager.
"Der Begriff Substitution steht in diesem Fall schlicht für einen
multinationalen Atommülldeal", erläutert der BI-Sprecher. "So ist vereinbart,
dass aus der Wiederaufarbeitungsanlage (WAA) Sellafield in England mehr
hochradioaktive Müllmengen in das Gorlebener Zwischenlager verfrachtet
werden sollen, als Deutschland ursprünglich an abgebrannten
Brennelementen geliefert hat. "Der "Deal" besteht darin, dass im Gegenzug
der durch die WAA-Prozesse angefallene schwach- und mittelradioaktive
Müll im Endlager Drigg, nahe Sellafield, unter katastrophalen Bedingungen
oberflächennah verbuddelt wird. Mit der Plutoniumfabrik La Hague in
Frankreich sind ähnliche Verträge vorbereitet". Aus welchen Ländern
ursprünglich der zusätzliche hochradioaktive Müll für Gorleben stammt, hofft
der BI-Sprecher durch einen Brief herauszufinden, der mit einer erneuten
Einladung an Bundesumweltminister Gabriel zu einer öffentlichen
Veranstaltung im Wendland gekoppelt ist.
Im Brüsseler Vortrag machte Althoff auch auf andere Vorbereitungen für
multinationale EU-Endlager aufmerksam. So erarbeitet ein von der EU
eingesetztes Forschungsprojekt mit dem Titel SAPIERR (Support Action
Pilot Initiative for European Regional Repositories) seit 2004 ein Szenario zur
Durchsetzung eines multinationalen Atommüll-Endlagers. Das überwiegend
aus dem 6. EU-Rahmenprogramm für Forschung und Entwicklung
finanzierte SAPIERR-Projekt errechnet den jetzigen und zukünftigen
Atommüllbestand und prüft rechtliche Rahmenbedingungen für einen
gemeinsamen multinationalen Endlagerstandort. "Einer der favorisierten
Endlagerstandorte ist schon jetzt Russland",
berichtet der BI-Sprecher. "Bereits 2001 hat das russische Parlament ein
Gesetz zur Erlaubnis des Imports von hochradioaktiven abgebrannten
Brennstäben erlassen. 2003 wurde beispielsweise der Uranminen- und
Uranverarbeitungsstandort Krasnokamensk, 7000 km östlich von Moskau als
internationales Endlager für hochradioaktiven Atommüll vorgeschlagen".
Neben Gorleben kommen laut Althoff aber auch andere EU-Standorte
"wahllos" in Frage: "Anfang dieses Jahrzehnts befand die Europäische Union
(EU), dass ihre Mitgliedstaaten mit ihren Abfallentsorgungs-Programmen
zügiger vorwärts schreiten sollten. Gleichzeitig wurde in den Raum gestellt,
dass zunächst für kleine Länder eine Zusammenarbeit in diesem Bereich
der einzige gangbare Weg sein kann. Dementsprechend formulierte sie
ihren Vorschlag für eine EURATOM-Richtlinie des Rates über die
Entsorgung abgebrannter Brennelemente und radioaktiver Abfälle. In Artikel 4
des Entwurfs der Richtlinie hielt sie zunächst für Mitgliedstaaten mit
geringem Abfallaufkommen ausdrücklich die Möglichkeit offen, radioaktive
Abfälle aus, "umweltpolitischen, sicherheitstechnischen oder wirtschaftlichen
Gründen und unter Einhaltung der Richtlinie 92/3 EURATOM zu Im- oder
Exportieren". Das Europäische Parlament hatte bereits früher eine
Resolution zum selben Thema erlassen. Interessanterweise wird später
aber der wahrscheinlichste Hintergrund, nämlich der rein wirtschaftliche
Aspekt, nicht mehr erwähnt. Stattdessen ist eingefügt, dass das Interesse zu
einem nicht unbeachtlichen Teil der zunehmenden "Besorgnis über
terroristische Bedrohungen" zuzuschreiben wäre".
Zu den für multinationale Endlager notwendigen rechtlichen
Rahmenbedingungen hielt der BI-Sprecher beim Brüsseler Hearing fest:
"Der Import radioaktiver Stoffe ist in vielen EU-Ländern, vor allen denen mit
Atommeilern, erlaubt. Der Export radioaktiver Stoffe ist bis auf Ausnahme
von Finnland in allen EU-Staaten rechtlich abgesegnet. Auch in der Frage der
Transiterlaubnis von Atommüll durch Länder, die von einem benachbarten
multinationalen Endlager über Transporte durch ihr Territorium betroffen
wären, gibt es keine rechtlichen Hindernisse".
"Wenn regierende Politiker von einer "Nationalen Aufgabe" bei der
Endlagerung von Atommüll sprechen, ist dies nach dem aktuellen Stand der
Substitutionsverträge und möglichen Folgen des SAPIERR-Projekts mehr
als fadenscheinig", resümiert der BI-Sprecher. "Es gibt keine sichere
Endlagerung. Statt Millionen in erwiesenermaßen ungeeignete Standorte wie
Gorleben in Deutschland oder Bure in Frankreich zu pumpen, ist der
Ausstieg überfällig".
Am Tag nach dem Hearing beteiligte sich die BI-Delegation mit einem
Transparent "Stop EURATOM, No Nuclear Constitution" (keine nukleare
Verfassung) an bunten Protesten am dazu passenden Brüsseler
Wahrzeichen "Atomium". Anschließend übergaben sie zusammen mit einer
internationalen Protest-Delegation 630.000 Unterschriften für den EU-weiten
Atomausstieg an den EU-Kommissar für Umwelt und Energie, Andris
Piebalgs.
Francis Althoff 05843-986789
Bürgerinitiative Umweltschutz Lüchow Dannenberg
Drawehner Str. 3 29439 Lüchow
Tel: 05841-4684 Fax: 3197
Pressesprecher: Francis Althoff 05843 986789
www.bi-luechow-dannenberg.de
Diet Simon