Protesters cleared as nuclear waste train reaches storage site
A convoy of nuclear waste has arrived at a storage site in northern Germany despite widespread protests that massively delayed the shipment.German police spent most of Monday night clearing thousands of anti-nuclear activists gathered to stop the convoy on the last leg of its journey.
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The convoy of 123 tonnes on radioactive waste chugged to the storage facility near the German town of Gorleben, amid swarms of riot police keeping protesters at bay.
Demonstrators were angry about the storage of nuclear waste in Germany and the continued use of nuclear plants in the country.
The shipment of radioactive waste arrived by rail on Monday from France to the northern German town of Dannenberg. The nuclear waste was then transferred into lorries for the last leg of the trip.
But the road convoy was delayed when Greenpeace protesters blocked the road with a container lorry, witnesses say.
Further along the route, police cleared protesters who were blocking the route to the nuclear waste facility. As they were hauled off the road the protesters called for nuclear power stations to be switched off.
At one point along the route, 2,000 sheep were let loose on the road. “The animal just wanted to join in a bit,” a spokesperson for the activist group Citizens’ Initiative Luechow-Dannenberg said.
During the rail journey from France where the nuclear waste has been treated to Germany, activists have staged sit-ins along the railway tracks.
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