Five containers of radioactive nuclear waste began their surface trip to the Sellafield reprocessing plant in Cumbria yesterday amid protests from German anti-nuclear activists.
Police detained over 50 demonstrators who blocked the road from the Neckarwestheim nuclear plant in southern Germany in an attempt to halt this latest shipment. It is the second shipment of nuclear waste in recent weeks and the first shipment to Britain in three years.
Yesterday's protests were lowkey in comparison to the running battles that accompanied the shipment of waste from France to Germany earlier this month. "This shipment will have serious effects on the environment. Sellafield is the biggest environmental hazard in western Europe", said Mr Veit Burger, an energy spokesman for Greenpeace.
Over 2,500 police officers were on hand yesterday to remove the 70 demonstrators staging a sit-in on the road near the nuclear plant, and the transport got underway after an hour's delay.
This shipment, along with waste from another plant, will be brought to the German town of Worth today and then on to Dunkirk in France. Authorities expect the shipment to reach Sellafield next week.
Protests against this latest shipment began on Monday when a dozen protesters chained themselves to railway tracks. They have vowed to further disrupt the shipment, in Germany and Britain, to make future cargoes prohibitively expensive.
Shipments of nuclear waste were suspended in Germany in 1998 after concerns were raised about radioactive leaks. The resumption of shipments has divided public opinion in Germany. Anti-nuclear activists accuse the Environment Minister and Green Party member, Mr Jurgen Trittin, who supported the last protests in 1998, of selling out.
Mr Trittin says Germany has a moral duty to be responsible for its own nuclear waste. The resumption of transports also form part of an agreement to phase out Germany's 19 nuclear reactors by 2025.
Germany has no facilities for reprocessing nuclear waste and must export waste for treatment to France and Britain. The suspension of waste transports in 1998 has caused huge problems for the nuclear plant operators who have little storage space for the highly dangerous waste.
"We have a huge backlog of waste here. To clear that, we have to ship around 128 tonnes of waste in the next five years", said Mr Werner Zaiss, technical manager of the nuclear plant in Neckarwestheim.
