Germany to ship N-waste to France

Protesters blocked the tracks last week to stop waste entering Germany

BERLIN, Germany -- Germany is to send a shipment of nuclear waste to France next week for the first time in three years, a French official said.

Yves Gauthier, spokesman for the French nuclear reprocessing firm Cogema, said the reprocessing plant at La Hague expected the German shipment to arrive on Wednesday.

Anti-nuclear activists clashed with police last week when Germany took back the first cargo of reprocessed waste from France since a 1999 ban on such movements of nuclear cargo.

Berlin implemented the ban over concerns about radioactive leaks and massive anti-nuclear protests.

France agreed in January to take more material from Germany's nuclear power plants for reprocessing if Germany accepted back waste already reprocessed in La Hague for long-term storage.

German nuclear energy sources confirmed some 30 tonnes of waste would be shipped from three power stations in southwest Germany to the La Hague reprocessing plant.

The sources said the transport was due to begin on Tuesday, although German police said a week-long train strike in France could delay the shipment.

Greenpeace spokesman Veit Buerger said last week's transport to the Gorleben storage plant in northern Germany -- which activists delayed for a day by chaining themselves to rail tracks -- had opened the floodgates for shipments to France.

"The government is treating France as the atom toilet of Germany," he said.

Buerger said Greenpeace is planning peaceful protests against the transports next week.

Another anti-nuclear group plans a demonstration on Sunday at the Philippsburg nuclear power plant in southern Germany from where some of the waste is due to come.

Greenpeace would not give any details about its planned protests, but many activists say they hope that by driving up the cost of policing such transports they will persuade the government to withdraw more quickly from nuclear energy.

The deployment of some 15,000 police officers last week to guard the first transport to La Hague since 1997 cost the state around $50 million.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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Greenpeace
Federal Environment Ministry

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