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1,250 tonnes of depleted uranium railed through densely populated Germany – to France?

1,250 tonnes of depleted uranium railed through densely populated Germany – to France?

Sydney Indymedia April 29th, 2009 By Diet Simon, adapting Cecile Lecomte’s report A 25-car train half a kilometre long has just carried 1,250 tonnes of depleted uranium through the most densely populated region of Germany – destination unknown, presumably France.

The train left Germany’s only uranium enrichment plant at Gronau (52° 12′, 160 km south of Hamburg) in the night from 27 to 28 April.Usually trains from the German-Dutch-British-owned enrichment plant close to the city of Münster and the Dutch border have taken depleted uranium to Rotterdam for shipment to Russia, where it’s been dumped in the open air.

The Urenco company is extremely secretive about the transports. This time journalists were told by federal police that the train headed for Duisburg and on to France.That would have taken the dangerous cargo through the densely populated Ruhr and Rhineland areas – if the police information is correct…………….
…….The train from Gronau was held up by two hours because a female French activist who lives in Germany, 27-year-old Cécile Lecomte, had abseiled over the tracks from a road overpass. She and other climbers have made such a name for themselves in disrupting nuclear transports that police now always have climbing specialists along on the trains to take the protesters down……….
………….”The aim is to reveal the secret atomic transports from the Gronau uranium enrichment plant and to draw people’s attention to the policy of Urenco,” she writes. ………………………..

“Radioactivity knows no borders. What kind of an end to atomic power is it if Gronau is expanded, thereby supporting the construction of new nuclear plants – such as the EPR in Flamanville, France – by supplying the product to power stations all over the globe.

“The waste is carted right across Europe in secret transports. That is no solution to the nuclear waste problem. On the contrary, the population is exposed to ever more dangers, the environment is polluted ever more…..”………………….’

1,250 tonnes of depleted uranium railed through densely populated Germany – to France? | Sydney Indymedia

April 29, 2009 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Germany, wastes | antinuclear, nuclear, nuclear wastes, radioactive