It’s Castor time again...

please update the article above: this is the whole german feature now. there are more translations to comem soon!

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Castor time again in Germany...

Various authors, translator Diet Simon

Multi-faceted, colourful and determined resistance is being put up against the 7th transport of atomic waste from France to the socalled "interim storage hall" in the northern German rural village of Gorleben.

The vague promises of the Social Democrat-Greens German government to abandon nuclear power production have hardly weakened the resistance or the need for it.

A special train carrying 12 socalled "Castor" containers is on the way from La Hague in France to deliver the containers to an above-ground hall in Gorleben.

The train was stopped for two hours in France on Monday by a French and a German activist who chained themselves to the track. It has resumed its trip.

At this point in time (4 p.m. Monday) the train is expected at the Dannenberg reloading crane on Tuesday - or later? - depending on how many times protesters manage to stop it.

As in November 02, 12 Castor containers are on the train, the maximum it can transport.

The exact running schedules of the Castor trains through France were declared a military state secret in September. Anyone publishing anything about them in France faces the prospect of being fined or jailed. That has not stopped publication of dates. This kind of civil disobedience has increased with the growth in recent years of the French anti-atomic movement. So as today's Luneville stop has shown, Castor trains can expect to be blocked in France as well.


At 7 p.m. Sunday evening the Castor train left the plutonium factory in La Hague, accompanied by protests in southern and northern France. Behind Luneville a Frenchman and an activist from the Wendland (Gorleben) area managed to chain themselves to the rails. The train was put two hours behind schedule and was expected at the Franco-German border at about 3.45 p.m.

Last year's Castor train had to make a number of unplanned stops, amounting to a total delay of more than 10 hours. This year many action groups have again mobilised for the transport, including in Bremen, Hamburg, Göttingen, Biblis among others.

The aim is again to stop the transport before it gets to the Wendland, as the area around Gorleben is called. Some of the attempts have included undermining the track with water in the Göhrde Forest near the waste dump.

A nationwide call has gone out to mount decentralised protest actions against the railways. Some of the bourgeois media are again trying, like in previous years, to demotivate the resistance with false reporting.

Meanwhile Police Director Friedrich Niehörster has set up a propaganda unit. See details in a separate report.

On Saturday 8 November there was the traditional prelude demonstration in Dannenberg, the small town where the Castor containers are lifted off the rail cars onto low-loader, heavy-duty trucks. The German section of this site has many pictures and a report on the demo.

It drew 6,000 people from all over Germany - more than last year and twice as many as expected by police and convenors. The Farmers' Emergency Community (Bäuerliche Notgemeinschaft) took part with almost 200 tractors. Camps and info points in Lüneburg, Hitzacker, Metzingen, Splietau etc went into action. Check out under Übersicht on the German page.

Also on Saturday, 12 activists of both genders occupied the pithead tower of the salt mine that is earmarked as the permanent repository of the atomic waste, a repeat of an action the previous week. They left the tower voluntarily after 12 hours. See pictures at [Bilder]. Other actions:: Rallye Monte Göhrde, tractor occupations (Trecker-Besetzungen).

A focal point for action this year is again the town Lüneburg. Not only does the train have to pass there, the town is a major logistical junction for the police and the seat of many of the district officials politically responsible for the transport and the police deployment. Multi-faceted actions are planned in the town.

In the Wendland itself the resistance is concentrated on the "Regio Aktiv" in the Göhrde Forest along the rail track from Lüneburg
to Dannenberg. Additionally, there is a camp in the Elbe resort town of Hitzacker, and actions are planned in the three resistance villages of Gusborn, Grippel and Laase by the Resistance Alliance (Bündnis Widersetzen).

With the call to a "Castoral Rural Party" ("Castorelle Landpartie") the Lüchow-Dannenberg civic action group, the umbrella organisation for the resistance in the county, is trying to mobilise more people into the Wendland for the Castor transport time and to show protest with cultural events along the transport route.


Criminalisation of activists

"Registered demonstrations will not be permitted from 10 November, non-registered ones from 8 November until the end of the transport," states an edict from the Lower Saxony district administration, against which a complaint has been filed. The building of an infrastructure in Lüneburg was obstructed, in Karlsruhe people known as nuclear opponents were forbidden from demonstrating and had their premises searched. But at least one perjury proceeding is also running against police of both genders. More on that at Mehr zum Thema.

The mainstream media are also substantially adding to the criminalisation of the resistance by allowing themselves to be used as a propaganda instrument. In addition to freely invented reports about perpetrators of violence, they attempt with wrong or distorted reports to demotivate the activists.

In addition, the police have set up their own propaganda unit - see the separate report about that. At the same time, independent journalists are being hindered in their movements, threatened or directly attacked. For the info war strategy of the police see weiterer Artikel über Info-War-Stratgie der Polizei.

Political context of the Castor transport

The ongoing transportation of atomic waste is extremely questionable for many reasons.

Every atomic transport is an additional threat to people and the environment.

No final repository has been decided.

Because of a leaking sediment, Gorleben is definitely an unsuitable location, yet they keep "exploring" the salt deposit. In May the federal environment minister, Jürgen Trittin, of The Greens, convened a commission to look for other final storage locations throughout the country.

However, regardless of where the waste will be dumped, a final storage in the sense the atomic industry wants it can and will never materialise. No geological formation - regardless of whether it's salt plugs, granite or whatever - can guarantee that it won't change in the thousands of years the waste will keep radiating. That alone should be enough to switch off all atomic power stations immediately.

Despite this, the federal government and the atomic industry have agreed on remaining operating times of at least 30 years for German atomic power stations. Which means the atomic waste will double once more.

Because the atomic industry can distribute the remaining amount of electricity at will between the nukes, the announced closure of the Stade station cannot really be seen as a success because other nukes can be operated correspondingly longer.

Even now existing atomic plants are being expanded or new ones inaugurated. Although the waste dumps at the station locations will in a few years save the industry the Castor transports, which are now the main focus of resistance, nothing will change in the general situation of atomic waste production and the risks inherent in it.

The expansion of a uranium enrichment facility at Gronau, the first step on the atomic spiral here in Germany, is also being continued. The research reactor FRM II inaugurated this year is the first completely new reactor to start up in Germany in 15 years.

The FRM II project has also been sharply criticised internationally because it uses highly-enriched, weapons-grade uranium.

Time and again the peace movement and atomic opponents point to the linkage between nuclear energy, reprocessing of fuel to weapons-grade fissile products and nuclear armament. See Text des Netzwerk
Friedenskooperative. The close linkage between civilian and military uses of atomic power is obvious: the plutonium produced in the civilian use can be won more easily for building weapons than would be possible with uranium enrichment. Which indicates a military interest in the further operation of atomic power stations.

The German atomic waste is processed in the plutonium factories of Sellafield, in northwest England, and La Hague, France. In the 50s and 60s the possibility of gaining plutonium was the only reason to make atomic technology possible through massive state subsidies.

The predecessor of the anti-democrat and almost German chancellor (prime minister), Franz-Josef Strauß of the Bavarian CSU party, was one of the early protagonists of a (then) West German nuclear programme.
(Article taking these issues further: Die Militarisierung der Europäischen Union)

So in November 2003 there can be no talk of having abandoned atomic energy.

Moreover, despite an announcement to that effect, no ban on construction of new atomic power stations has been decided.

Equally, the atomic industry can continue to invest freely on the capital market the untaxed reserves it is forced to collect and set aside for "disposal" of the atomic waste and so continue to buy into other industries. This situation amounts to continued public subsidisation of atomic power. And it makes the accusation of subsidisation of wind power appear in a very different light.

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