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Status: 02.11.2020 4:06 pm
A special ship brought six containers of nuclear waste to Nordenham on Monday morning. The former have already been loaded onto a train. The next stage of transport will probably start tomorrow.
The waste from German nuclear power plants, which have been reprocessed in Sellafield, England, is transported by rail to a temporary storage facility at Biblis in Hesse. Neither the police nor the Nuclear Service (GNS) responsible for transport gave information on when the train will leave in Nordenham (Wesermarsch district). A police spokeswoman said only that the reloading of the Castor containers from the special ship to the train would last until Tuesday. The same could be heard from the GNS.
Wagons are checked for radiation
The special ship “Pacific Grebe” had in Moored Monday morning in Nordenham Harbor. A few hours later, a crane lifted the first Beaver from the ship. He slowly maneuvered the blue container through the air toward a train that had been waiting at the dock for days. Before nuclear waste is transported by rail, experts measure radiation from loaded railcars. According to GNS, this ensures that the legally prescribed limit value for radioactive radiation is met. In the last measurement at Sellafield, the value was a quarter of the allowable limit.
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Two railway lines are possible
The train will initially travel from Midgard Harbor in Nordenham to Hude via a single track route. There are then two options for the further course of the route: the train could go through Delmenhorst and Osnabrück or through Oldenburg and Papenburg to Biblis. According to the federal police, the two possible rail routes that the Castors could pass through Germany are insured. Federal police expect more protests and possible disruptive actions from activists along the railroad line. For example, the “Bloc Castor” initiative announced its intention to block the train.
Police expect protests along the route
Nuclear opponents accompany Castor transport with protest actions.
Opponents of nuclear power had already spent the weekend in Nordenham, Oldenburg, Göttingen and Bremen protested against the transport. In Nordenham on Monday, a handful of nuclear opponents held a permanent vigil in front of the cordoned off port area. “The situation is calm,” the police spokeswoman said. The “Stop Castor” alliance is against transport because there will be no final deposit of nuclear waste in Germany for the foreseeable future. Environmentalists at Robin Wood see “random moving nuclear waste” in transportation, which does not solve the nuclear waste problem, but exposes the environment and the population to considerable risk.
Criticism of transportation during the corona pandemic
The return of nuclear waste from the Sellafield reprocessing plant due to the corona pandemic is particularly controversial. In addition to opponents of nuclear power, politicians and the police had also criticized the fact that such transportation was an additional burden at this time. The state of Lower Saxony had previously tried unsuccessfully to work to get the federal government to postpone transport. The latter had refused to change the date again, but with reference to international agreements on the return of nuclear waste. Another postponement was also out of the question for logistical and legal reasons, Federal Environment Minister Svenja Schulze (SPD) told the Funke media group newspapers.
Hygiene concept also to deal with protesters
Police Vice President Andreas Sagehorn said the Oldenburg Police Department had developed a comprehensive hygiene concept based on the recommendations of the Robert Koch Institute. “The health of everyone involved has the highest priority,” said the chief operating officer. This applies both to police forces in action and to citizens exercising their basic right to freedom of assembly. Among other things, officers must wear mouth and nose protection throughout the mission.
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