nuclear-news

An alliance of German activist groups wants to stop nuclear waste export to the USA

from Diet Simon,  13 Nov 14  An alliance of German environment activists plans to prevent the export of CASTOR containers with highly radioactive fuel pebbles to the USA from Jülich and Ahaus.

When the supervisory board of the Jülich research centre meets on 19 November to discuss what to do with the CASTORS there, activists will mount a protest outside.

The activists argue that several expertises show that the thought-about exports of highly radioactive materials to South Carolina would be illegal. They say government plans to produce legality by simply relabeling the commercially operated Jülich reactor an experimental one won’t work.

“The AVR reactor is without a doubt an output reactor and is listed that way by the Federal Agency for Radiation Protection. That brings it under the law changed last summer which bans the export of radioactive fuel elements and requires the safest possible storage in Germany,” suggests Rainer Moormann, who used to work in the power station and the research centre.

Peter Bastian of the SOFA Münster group emphasises the aspect of societal responsibility: “Though the operators of atomic facilities try to shirk their responsibility for highly radioactive waste, exporting the radiating problems abroad is no solution in our view. An out of sight, out of mind strategy that makes innocent third parties suffer is unacceptable for the disposal of our atomic waste.“

Kerstin Ciesla, of BUND, the German section of Friends of the Earth, demands that the coalition parties in the North-Rhine Westphalian state government, Social Democrats and Greens, keep to their coalition agreement. “That stipulates that the CASTORS, especially those stored in Jülich, will be transported only one more time, and that is to a final repository once a location has been found for one. We will not sit back and watch the coalition agreement being broken, we will try to stop this transport with all the means we can muster.”

The catchcry of the anti-nuclear movement, “Nothing in, nothing out!“ is the basic tenet of the new alliance, currently comprising 13 groups, with more likely to come on board.

At the end of September a tour through Germany with Tom Clements, a South Carolina environmental activist and politician, who heads the Savannah River Site Watch, kicked off the joint activism. The alliance plans to build on that success and decided on continuous cooperation.

The following organisations have joined the alliance:

• Aktionsbündnis Münsterland gegen Atomanlagen, www.urantransport.de/uran.html
• AKW-Nee-Aachen, www.anti-akw-ac.de
• Antiatomplenum Köln, www.antiatomkoeln.de
• Anti Atom-Bündnis Niederrhein, www.antiatom-buendnis-niederrhein.de
• Arbeitsgemeinschaft Schacht Konrad / Atommüll-Alarm, www.ag-schacht-konrad.de
• attac Jülich
• .ausgestrahlt, www.ausgestrahlt.de
• Bündnis Stopp Westcastor, www.westcastor.de
• BUND NRW e.V., www.bund-nrw.de
• Montagsspaziergänger gegen Atomkraft Wegberg
• Robin Wood, www.robinwood.de/Energie.energie.0.html
• Sofa Münster, www.sofa-ms.de
• Strahlenzug Mönchengladbach, www.strahlenzug.de

November 15, 2014 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Germany, opposition to nuclear, wastes