By SOFA Münster, translated by Diet Simon

From 2 to 4 May about 150 anti-nuclear activists from about 40 centres in Germany as well as Russia, Finland, Sweden, Hungary, France and the Netherlands took part in the spring conference of the anti-nuclear movement in the German town of Ahaus, site of a nuclear waste dump.

There was lively and passionate discussion about the state of their work and future strategies were developed.

The key demand was the immediate cessation of nuclear power generation and the smashing of the market-dominating power companies.

By Diet Simon

German authorities have allowed another transport of highly active nuclear waste from France to the north German village of Gorleben this year.
It will be the first since 2006 and as usual is expected in autumn on dates not yet revealed.
Each transport by train and trucks usually costs about 30 million euros to police as thousands of demonstrators from all over Germany converge on Gorleben, roughly equidistant between Hamburg and Hanover.

By Diet Simon

German nuclear opponents criticise the continued government funding of nuclear energy although it is government policy to stop it.
They allege that funding is channelled “through the back door” via the European Community, which is still putting billions of euros into helping the nuclear industry.
Two groups fighting storage of nuclear waste in their areas say a congress on future energies in the Ruhr city of Essen on 19 February “made frighteningly clear the ambitious nuclear energy targets of the North-Rhine Westphalian government.

The activists were released about an hour later.

Rashid Alimov, editor of Bellona’s Russian pages, along with Alexei Snegirev, also of Bellona, and Tatyana Kulbakina, of Murmansk’s Nature and Youth, where arrested near the Izotop radioactive waste facility in the Leningrad Region.
A photographer with the newspaper Moi Raion was also detained with the activists.

Alimov said by telephone that he and the other activists established that radiation background levels around the waste were higher than normal. No reason for the detention was given by police.

By Aktionsbündnis Münsterland gegen Atomanlagen

A year ago Russian opponents of atomic power filed a criminal complaint in Münster against Urenco Deutschland, alleging illegal transportation of atomic waste from Gronau to Russia. The state attorney’s office started to investigate, but wanted to be quickly rid of the politically charged case. In May it stopped its investigation of the globally leading uranium enrichment firm. Now the Russian activists are demanding resumption of the investigation and have engaged a lawyer from Münster.

The background is the delivery by now of more than 21,000 tonnes of depleted uranium from Gronau to Russia. Depleted uranium (DU) is a waste product created in uranium enrichment. Urenco and the licensing and supervisory bodies in North-Rhine Westphalia and Berlin claim that the DU is valuable recyclable material, but there is no commercial world market for it. It is used for armour-breaching ammunition and to dilute weapons-grade uranium. Urenco claims the DU is re-enriched in Russia to return to Gronau. The reality is that since 2003 Urenco has not imported uranium from Russia. Instead, RWE Nukem became the importer of natural uranium.

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