"Atomic stew" to roll through Germany next year

Anti-nuclear activists say nuclear reactor waste containing plutonium is to be transported through Germany next year and the authorities have been trying to keep this secret.

The resistance group at the Gorleben waste dump east of Hanover says the transports to Gorleben and another dump in Lubmin near Greifswald on the Baltic Coast will carry waste from a former reprocessing plant at Karlsruhe in southern Germany.

The Bürgerinitiative Umweltschutz Lüchow Dannenberg (BI), the umbrella organisation of the Gorleben resistance, says between 1971 and 1990 the Karlsruhe plant processed more than 200 tonnes of spent fuel from research and commercial reactors, separating off more than one tonne of plutonium in the process.

"This produced almost 70,000 litres of a highly dangerous radioactive brew that has to be permanently stirred and cooled in special tanks to avert a chain reaction.

"In a vitrification plant about to be finished in Karlsruhe, the plutonium soup is to be fused at 1,150° Celsius into boron-silicate glass.

"Then the solidified 'atomic stew' is to be filled into 1.3-metre-high 150-litre steel containers and be stored in Castor caskets."

The BI statement says the licensing authorities have approved the construction of a transport marshalling space for six Castors. The environment ministry of Baden-Württemberg state in Stuttgart rated this space as not falling under nuclear law licensing requirements.

"Because of sharpened safety demands, the dismantlement costs of the recycling plant have doubled in recent years to about 1.9 billion euros," the BI's media spokesman, Francis Althoff, writes.

"Because the energy suppliers are under no post-financing obligation, the operators say the federal government as the 90% main financier and the state of Baden-Württemberg have to deal with the extra costs. The funding made available so far is to be used up by the late autumn.

"For 2007 Castor transports from the former Karlsruhe recycling plant to the Gorleben interim storage and the interim storage in Lubmin near Greifswald have been applied for."

The BI accuses the interior minister of Lower Saxony, Uwe Schünemann, of duplicity by his claim that there would be no Castor transports to Gorleben next year because police were too stretched to guard them.

"It's an attempt to divert attention. The minister should speak plainly and neither hide the safety problems of the Castor caskets nor try to focus public attention only on transports from La Hague in France."

The BI argues that the likely cancellation of a transport from La Hague next year is due neither to police being overstretched by the World Cup nor by the G8 summit in the Baltic resort Heiligendamm, but to safety problems of the Castor.

"The planned transport of the highly radioactive 'atomic stew' from Karlsruhe demonstrates the planlessness of politicians and the nuclear industry in the disposal issue. Those in responsibility should not delude themselves that secret transports could prevent the protests against the unsuitable final storage project Gorleben."