“Foul nuclear waste deal” alleged by German activists

international | environment | news report Friday April 06, 2007 03:05 by Diet Simon

Opponents of Germany’s main dump for highly radioactive nuclear waste are crying foul over a deal the environment minister is proposing. The deal would be to resume exploration of a salt deposit as a final repository if the minister’s opponents agree to a wider search for alternative sites. Local opponents to dumping near the northern village of Gorleben point out that since the early 80s there has been scientific proof that the salt dome there cannot prevent atomic waste from entering the biosphere because it lacks rock cover.

Opponents of Germany’s main dump for highly radioactive nuclear waste are crying foul over a deal the environment minister is proposing.

The minister, Sigmar Gabriel, a Social Democrat, is reported to have offered the conservative Christian Democrats that he’ll allow further exploration of a salt deposit as a final repository if they agree to a wider search for alternative sites.

I know, a bit much to try to comprehend if you’re not close to the action, so let me explain.

Although the Social and Christian Democrats govern together in a coalition, from the beginning of this fractious arrangement they have been at odds over nuclear policy.

But on paper they are committed to phasing out nuclear power by 2021, a decision taken by the previous government of Social Democrats and Greens.

This aggravates the pro-industry conservatives and the powerful electricity industry, which still runs 17 nuclear power stations and wants more time for them.

But what to do with the growing mountain of waste? At the moment spent fuel goes to France and once a year comes back for storage in a hall in the northern village of Gorleben under a gigantic police guard of up to 20,000 personnel.

Right next to the hall is a man-made salt mine explored for some years as a possible permanent repository. The previous Social Democrat-Greens government stopped the exploration over safety concerns.

Opponents in Gorleben allege it’s all smoke and mirrors and that despite the safety concerns it’s a done deal that the faulty salt dome will be the final storage. Which is what industry and Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats want.

The Gorleben activists argue that every consignment of waste that reaches the hall, officially described as an “interim storage”, makes it more likely that the salt next door will become the final repository.

Which brings us back to the proposed deal. Sigmar is telling the conservatives he’ll allow Gorleben exploration to resume immediately if they go along with his public promise to look for another site. “That’s a fair offer,” he told the daily Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung.

The umbrella organisation of the Gorleben resistance, the Bürgerinitiative Umweltschutz Lüchow Dannenberg (BI), says it welcomes the search for alternative dumpsites, but demands that under no circumstances should Gabriel end the moratorium on exploring the salt dome in a swap deal.

The BI media spokesman, Francis Althoff, writes in a release: "A political swap can’t be the basis for seriously dealing with highly radioactive waste.

“Since the early 80s there has been scientific proof that the Gorleben salt dome cannot prevent atomic waste from entering the biosphere because it lacks a sealing rock cover.

“Over six square kilometres there are holes in this cover and in some places there is no cover at all, so that water will carry radioactive materials into the environment,” Althoff writes.

"Because of these long-known and unchangeable geological facts no more examinations of any kind are needed in Gorleben, from a scientific point of view the site needs to be closed down.”

As another element in the proposed swap package the BI fears the establishment of an underground laboratory in the salt mine “as another door opener to making this the atomic waste loo”.

The company running the Gorleben storage hall announced last year it would sponsor professorships at the Clausthal Technical University (http://www.tu-clausthal.de/Welcome.php.en) to fund such a project.

Professor Klaus Kühn (https://qis.tu-clausthal.de/qisserver/rds;jsessionid=31...rch=n) of that university explained the plans in an interview with the local paper in the Gorleben area, the Elbe-
Jeetzel-Zeitung.

For many years Kühn has been certifying the “safety” of the final repository Asse II near Wolfenbüttel, which is uncontrollably running full of water that could ultimately reach ground water along hundreds of kilometres (http://de.indymedia.org/2007/02/167830.shtml ) and the Morsleben final repository near Helmstedt, a former mine whose ceiling is crashing down on the waste held there.

"From the fact that Gorleben would be an atomic loo with upward flushing the necessary political conclusions have to be drawn at last,” demands the BI spokesman and predicts protests against ending the exploration moratorium.

The Gorlebeners fear that their area will become the final nuclear dump for all of Europe “because of substitution treaties already in place” (http://de.indymedia.org/2007/03/171838.shtml).

Another court win for Gorleben protesters

In another development related to Gorleben protests, Germany’s supreme court has again ruled that police broke the law when seizing anti-nuclear protesters five and a half years ago, but Althoff expects the police to keep doing the wrong thing, anyway.

The case involves four complainants who were in a group of nine people on seven motorbikes taking part in protests against another consignment of highly radioactive nuclear waste to Gorleben on 13 November 2001.

The constitutional court, Germany’s highest, has now ordered the Lüneburg regional court, which has jurisdiction for Gorleben, to declare illegal the seizure and detention of the four by police.

Althoff writes it emerges clearly from the order now made by the Lüneburg court that the illegality of the seizure was linked mainly to the failure of police to immediately present the protesters to a judge.

"Instead of creating clarity, the outcome probably means continuing seizures and court challenges against them in the ‘special law zone Gorleben’," criticises Althoff.

He notes that litigation by the BI is still pending in the supreme court challenging zones 70 kilometres long and up to a kilometre wide in which demonstrations are banned when waste is railed and trucked to Gorleben.

Protesters have won a string of judgements against illegal police actions in connection with the annual transports.

When recycled waste comes back to Germany from La Hague in France up to 20,000 police are assigned in the wider Gorleben area alone to guard its passage into the storage hall.

Usually demonstrators are injured in clashes with police. For a report on the most recent consignment see http://de.indymedia.org/2006/11/161877.shtml. Other Gorleben court stories are at Woman prefers jail to anti-nuclear fine (http://de.indymedia.org/2005/08/126483.shtml), Court: Years of illegal Gorleben detentions (http://de.indymedia.org/2005/04/110836.shtml), Court overturns some Gorleben demo curbs (http://de.indymedia.org/2004/11/97371.shtml), Court halves fines, blockade "mildest means" (http://de.indymedia.org/2004/10/96747.shtml) and First Castor acquittal in Hannover (http://de.indymedia.org/2004/10/95982.shtml).

Back to the latest case:

The Lüneburg order took a years-long odyssey through various court levels to achieve.

On 13 November 2001 police stopped the loose group of nine on their bikes at about 11.18 p.m. some 500 to 1,000 metres from the L 256 trunk road near the village of Laase.

The subsequent checking of IDs far away from the no-go zone was argued as a “general traffic check”. The police Gorleben deployment management ordered the seizure of the group although the officers at the scene remonstrated against it by radio.

The nine had to push their motorbikes for half an hour to Laase, where they were then parked away. Subsequently the group were taken into the no-go zone, curiously near a sit-down road blockade.

"It was incredibly absurd to see how a large number of people could move about freely in the no-demo zone without being bothered by the police, whereas just a few metres beside them we were arbitrarily robbed of our freedom,” recalls a local woman who was in the group.

At about 0.50 a.m. on 14 November police prisoner vehicles arrived in the village and from 2 a.m. took control of 64 people held there. After the seized persons were transported at about 4.10 a.m. to a holding point in another village, body searches down to the underwear were carried out.

There was no presentation to a judge, which is legally required for a detention, because the local court had shut down at 10 p.m. the previous night. Nor did police make any attempt to obtain a judge’s order.

The release of the detainees, held in collective cells with camper insulation mats on the ground and where there was only a damaged, leaking drinks canister, began only at 8 a.m., after the nuclear waste had been delivered to the storage hall.

For more information contact Francis Althoff 05843-986789
Bürgerinitiative Umweltschutz Lüchow Dannenberg e.V.
Drawehner Str. 3 29439 Lüchow
www.bi-luechow-dannenberg.de
Büro: Tel: 05841-4684 Fax: -3197
büro@bi-luechow-dannenberg.de
Pressesprecher: Francis Althoff 05843 986789
presse@bi-luechow-dannenberg.de