nuclear-news

Germany in nuclear turmoil before election

For Merkel, no clear way out of nuclear woes
PRESS TV 06 Sep 2009 Anti-nuclear sentiment in Germany escalates ahead of national election, with some 50,000 activists marching in Berlin to demand the shut down of the country’s 17 aging nuclear power plants.

On Saturday, the demonstrators, led by 400 farmers on tractors, marched past Chancellor Angela Merkel’s office in the capital to urge her center-right government to stay committed to a nuclear phase-out by 2020 adopted eight years ago. …………
……..Saturday’s rally rejected a proposal to transform a former salt mine in Gorleben, in northern Germany, into a long-term storage site for radioactive waste.

The concern centers on the fact that some radioactive species have half-lives longer than one million years. Plutonium, as one example, has a half-life of more than 24,000 years.

Federal Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel, who is at the forefront of the anti-nuclear campaign, has rejected the use of the rural area as a potential nuclear waste site.

Nuclear energy remains unpopular in Germany and a number of mishaps at the plants that entailed water and power cuts have damaged the floundering support.

For Merkel, no clear way out of nuclear woes

September 7, 2009 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | 1, Germany, politics | antinuclear, nuclear, radioactive