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- Xref: sparky misc.activism.progressive:6205 alt.activism:15800 talk.environment:3466
- Path: sparky!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!ames!agate!remarque.berkeley.edu!jym
- From: Greenpeace via Jym Dyer <jym@mica.berkeley.edu>
- Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive,alt.activism,talk.environment
- Subject: NEWS: Germans Want to Withdraw from Reprocessing Sellafield Fuel Rods
- Followup-To: talk.environment
- Date: 1 Sep 1992 22:11:52 GMT
- Organization: The Naughty Peahen Party Line
- Lines: 101
- Approved: map@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
- Message-ID: <Greenpeace.1Sep1992.8am3@naughty-peahen.org>
- NNTP-Posting-Host: remarque.berkeley.edu
- Originator: jym@remarque.berkeley.edu
-
- [Greenpeace Press Release from Environet -- Redistribute Freely]
-
- OUTCOME OF GREENPEACE'S TOUR WITH SELLAFIELD SAND - FEDERAL
- GERMAN STATES WANT TO WITHDRAW FROM REPROCESSING
-
- HAMBURG August 28, 1992 (GP) -- The majority of federal German
- states are striving to withdraw from nuclear reprocessing and
- have highly radioactive spent fuel rods go directly to final
- disposal in Germany. This is the result of the numerous
- talks which Greenpeace's nuclear expert Roland Hipp has in
- the last two weeks conducted with all sixteen federal state
- ministers responsible, or with their representatives. The
- talks had been prompted by the delivery of radioactively
- polluted sand from the area around the Sellafield
- reprocessing plant in England. From 1993 German nuclear
- waste is also supposed to be reprocessed at Sellafield.
-
- "We can prove with this radioactively contaminated sand
- that reprocessing is unlawful, as the Nuclear Energy Law
- stipulates "harmless recycling"," said Mr. Hipp. "Given
- these preconditions and the broad resistance from the
- federal German states, the Federal Environment Minister,
- Klaus Toepfer, has no alternative but to decide on
- withdrawing from reprocessing abroad. Greenpeace is
- therefore demanding the German Government to withdraw
- immediately."
-
- Without intending to, the state of Mecklenburg Vorpommen,
- governed by the CDU (Christian Democrat) party, has backed
- Greenpeace in its argumentation. In a letter to Greenpeace of
- 25th August 1992 the Ministry of the Environment came to the
- conclusion that "according to the conclusion of the gamma
- spectroscopic and alpha spectroscopic analyses of the material
- conducted by the University of Bremen, all the material is
- radioactive waste."
-
- A CDU Ministry thus concedes what the Federal Environment
- Minister, Mr. Toepfer, has always denied. - Both the district and
- the sea around Sellafield are radioactive waste, and according to
- German radiation protection norms have to undergo waste disposal.
- But this means there has not been "harmless recycling" in the
- reprocessing. Supplies of German spent fuel rods to Sellafield
- thus present a violation of the law passed by the German
- Government.
-
- Some nine federal states governed by the SPD (Social Democrats)
- or SPD and Greens, the so-called "A-Laender", stated to
- Greenpeace their political will for withdrawing from
- reprocessing. At the forefront here is Hesse, whose
- Environment Minister, Joschka Fischer, refused Greenpeace's
- radioactive sand with the words, "Radioactive crap goes to
- Toepfer. With best wishes from Hesse."
-
- There is obviously also uncertainty in some CDU-governed
- states, too, as to whether the political line pursued by Mr.
- Toepfer is still the right one. Saxony and Saxony Anhalt
- only accept reprocessing abroad if it meets German radiation
- protection norms. But according to expert opinion this
- cannot ever be achieved either at the reprocessing plant at
- Sellafield in England or at La Hague in France.
-
- The Berlin federal state government described reprocessing as "a
- dirty, economically nonsensical business", but at the moment
- regards it as the only viable waste disposal path, since no final
- repository exists. Only Bavaria, Mecklenburg Vorpommern,
- Thuringia and Berlin appeared still to back up the Federal
- Environment Minister and his reprocessing plans. Decisions are
- due to be made shortly. The all-state committee of secretaries
- of state is meeting in September to agree on a "waste management
- consensus" on nuclear waste.
-
- The relevant paper, and the direction in which the A-Laender
- wants things to move, has been on hand for two days; these
- states are demanding withdrawal from reprocessing and direct
- final disposal. With this initial position it seems doubtful
- whether a consensus with the Federal Government and the CDU-
- governed states can be arrived at. The Minister-Presidents are
- then supposed to decide about the future guidelines for waste
- disposal in Germany with the Federal Government at the end of
- October.
-
- The background to the debate:
-
- A new reprocessing plant, THORP, as it is called, is going into
- operation at Sellafield in England in the autumn.
- Reprocessing here is supposed to include 885 tonnes of spent fuel
- rods from German nuclear power stations, to be reprocessed by the
- year 2000. The plant's emissions are already today so high that
- the surrounding countryside and sea are radioactively
- contaminated. Analysing the soil samples taken by Greenpeace on
- the basis of their dry weight, analytic chemists at Manchester
- University found activity concentrations in the samples of up to
- 13,000 becquerels of caesium 137 per kilogramme, 27,000
- becquerels of americium 241, and 10,800 becquerels of plutonium
- 239.
-
- With the opening of the new plant, built specially for
- foreign waste, the radioactive emissions of the whole plant will
- increase by a thousand per cent to 27.8 million curies. This may
- be compared with the 50 million curies which, according to
- official data, escaped at the accident at Chernobyl.
-