Environmentalists protest upcoming nuclear waste shipment from France

GORLEBEN, Germany (AFP) Oct 29, 2003
Activists from the environmental watchdog Greenpeace scaled a tower at a nuclear waste storage facility in northern Germany Wednesday to protest an upcoming waste shipment from France, police said.

Around dawn, 25 protesters in Gorleben climbed the 40-meter (131-foot) high tower after scaling a wall that protects the grounds of the installation.

Afterwards, they unfurled a banner opposing the shipment, due in two weeks.

Police did not intervene.

"They can remain there until the next shipment in November, for all I care," a police spokesman said.

Germany, which has no waste treatment facilities of its own, sends its spent fuel rods to be reprocessed at a factory in northwest France then ships them back to Gorleben to be stored.

The shipments are regularly protested by environmentalists, who claim that they are dangerous and that the waste will contaminate the water table at Gorleben.

TERRA.WIRE