(From the Nuclear Resister #164, December 5, 2011. For a free copy of the current issue, email your postal address to nukeresister@igc.org.)
Castor Schottern activists in Germany work together to stop the train carrying nuclear waste by removing gravel ballast from under the rails. (Castor Schottern photo)
The 12th and last of the scheduled rail shipments of German nuclear reactor waste from a reprocessing center in France left the station a day earlier than expected in November. Authorities wanted to get the jump on tens of thousands of nuclear resisters assembling all along the possible routes from La Hague to the geologic grave site at Gorleben, in Germany’s northern Wendland. Despite the head start, this shipment took longer than any other to reach its destination due to the largest such opposition protest ever mounted in France, and the second largest in 35 years of nuclear waste protest in Germany. France’s failure to get German agreement to the expedited shipment also added to a delay at their border.
An echo of the past and inspiration for the present resistance to the shipments came from a prison in Frankfurt, where Franziska Wittig began serving an 80-day sentence October 14 for conviction of assault. She and two others had chained themselves to the tracks in November 2008, stopping the train at the French border for 12 hours. Wittig refused to pay an €800 fine.
Eleven massive Castor canisters on special rail cars made up the train that pulled out of Valognes, France, late on the afternoon of November 23. Already that morning, police using teargas and truncheons
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