Planned German Radioactive Waste Transport Protested - Castor

["greenbase" <greenbas@gb.greenpeace.org>]

GREENPEACE PROTESTS IN WALHEIM AGAINST CASTOR TRANSPORT

Walheim/Hamburg, 17 March 1998.  Early this morning several
Greenpeace activists climbed up the smokestack of the coal power
plant in Walheim, Baden-Wurttemberg.  At a height of about 50
meters, the climbers suspended a banner saying "Stop Castor!"  
Within the next few days, the Castor train to Ahaus will be
assembled inside the disused power plant. It is expected that
three flasks from the Neckarwestheim nuclear power plant in
Baden-Wurttemberg and three from the  Gundremmingen nuclear
power plant in Bavaria will be arriving here soon.  The 
transport to Ahaus is planned for the morning of the 25th of
March.

It will carry a total of 60 tonnes of highly radioactive waste
containing about 600 kilograms of plutonium, the raw material of
nuclear bombs.  The train will transport six times as much
radioactivity as was released during the Chernobyl reactor
catastrophe.

A serious accident in which radioactivity were released would be
a catastrophe.  Expertise of nuclear transport accidents reveal
that even if only one Castor flask were damaged and only one-ten
thousandth of its radioactivity were released, everyone within
a radius of six kilometres would have to be evacuated and the
soil in this area would need decontamination.  Even at a
distance of ten kilometres, radiation would still be above the
maximum permitted German limit.

Gero Luecking, Greenpeace nuclear expert, said, "We are
demonstrating in Walheim because the nuclear train must be
stopped at the very start.  Its journey through densely
populated Germany is unnecessary and dangerous. The unsolved
problem of what to do with nuclear waste is only covered up by
sending it from South German nuclear power plants to North
German interim storage sites.   A nuclear transport that is
accompanied by police simply distracts attention from the real
problem.  Phasing out nuclear power is the only way to limit the
risks of this  technology."

The upcoming transport is completely unnecessary. Both nuclear
power plants that are sending their radwaste to Ahaus still have
available storage capacity on site. In Neckarwestheim this
capacity is available until 2000. In Gundremmingen, spent fuel
elements could be replaced six more times until its on-site
cooling pond were full by 2005. Greenpeace calls for a halt to
Castor transports and the phaseout of
nuclear power by 2005.

There are 420 new spaces available for the Castors in Ahaus.
They are to remain there for 30 years. The storage site in Ahaus
does not have a containment structure and therefore any
radioactivity released from a faulty Castor flask would escape
into the environment.   Castors that become leaky must be
freighted all the way across Germany to Gorleben for repairs in
a special facility that hasn't even begun operations yet.  The
shipment of leaky Castors is an additionally risky business.  
The interim storage of nuclear waste in Ahaus is irresponsible
for another reason as well: military aircraft engage in low-
level flights directly over the storage site!

Greenpeace Germany on the Internet: http://www.greenpeace.de
Greenpeace International on the Internet:
http://www.greenpeace.org