Thousands of protesters near the East German town of Gorleben chained themselves to railroad tracks, setup barricades and blocked roads in order to stop a shipment of approximately 123 tonnes of nuclear waste to a nearby waste storage facility. Sources say the protesters managed to delay the arrival of the waste by 12 to 14 hours.
The German government dispatched nearly 16,000 police, including riot police, in order to clear train tracks and roads and remove an estimated 15,000 protesters. Police worked through the night dispersing protesters with truncheons and quelling flaming barricades with fire hoses. One of the most formidable barricades to be cleared was a road block 2 km away from Gorleben, in which protesters parked 37 tractors and constructed two large cement pyramids, chaining four protesters to each pyramid.
A train transporting nuclear waste from France delivers waste each year, where it is then transferred to trucks and shipped the last few kilometers to a facility close to Gorleben. Protesters claim that the containers are not thick enough and thus unfairly endanger them and the police.
Much to the protesters’ approval, the German government has approved plans to phase out the country’s 17 nuclear reactors by 2020. In Germany, where nuclear power accounts for 1/4 of the country’s energy usage; rising energy costs combined with mandates to reduce greenhouse gasses have caused some to question the proposed phase-out.
Image Credit: Nicholas Babaian via Flickr, under a Creative Commons Liscence.
Sources:
http://www.euronews.net/en/article/10/11/2008/german-riot-police-break-up-nuclear-train-protests/
http://news.aol.com/article/thousands-in-germany-protest-nuclear/241964
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/18/20081110/tsc-german-riot-police-break-up-nuclear-c2ff8aa.html
