The Associated Press reports today that activists tried to stop a train carrying radioactive waste in France destined for Germany. “Some 300 demonstrators clashed with police yesterday in fields in the village of Lieusaint, outside Valognes, the site of the rail depot from where the train loaded with the uranium treated by French nuclear company Areva departed. …(The activists) contend such shipments are too dangerous for rail, sea or road.”
The article continues, “Riot police fired tear gas at anti-nuclear protesters in a Normandy field while activists damaged a railway and delayed the departure of a train carrying recycled uranium to Germany yesterday. …The train finally left the depot at Valognes a bit later than scheduled, but is expected to meet protests and resistance all along its journey from a nuclear waste processing site on the English Channel to a storage site in northern Germany. …Areva spokesman Julien Duperray said the train was expected in Gorleben, Germany, in about three days.”
The Council of Canadians has been opposing the shipment of radioactive waste from the Bruce Power nuclear plant on Lake Huron to a ‘recycling’ facility in Sweden. In order for the radioactive waste to get to a ship on the Great Lakes, it must first travel from the nuclear plant on large trucks on highways and city-owned streets to the harbour in Owen Sound. If that were accomplished, the ships would travel Lake Huron, the St. Clair River, Lake St. Clair, the Detroit River, Lake Erie, Lake Ontario, the St. Lawrence River and then across the Atlantic Ocean. More to the point, it would need to pass through a narrow section of the St. Lawrence Seaway that runs through the territory of the Mohawks of Kahnawake. The ships would also need to pass through the Welland Canal, which will close for the winter season sometime in January. The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission one-year permit for the Bruce Power shipments expires on February 3, 2012.
The Council is also opposing the proposed transportation of nuclear waste across Canada to a possible large storage facility in Saskatchewan. More on that http://canadians.org/blog/?p=5633.
We reject nuclear power because it poses an unacceptable risk to people and the environment. It is neither clean, safe, peaceful, nor economic.
