Germans at a loss over nuclear waste

The transport of highly radioactive waste from the French nuclear fuel reprocessing plant in La Hague back to Germany has provoked the largest protest to date in the region surrounding the interim storage facility in Gorleben. Several thousand people blocked the transport of Castor containers over the weekend. The left-liberal daily Süddeutsche Zeitung calls the protest a true popular uprising: "The Castor container isn't a concept, it's a rolling perplexity. That's why the eternal protests against it have been so important. They have kept the consciousness of the biggest problem of the nuclear and power industry alive. That's the merit of the Gorleben resistance which has now grown into a popular uprising spearheaded by housewives, pastors, teachers and farmers. And it would be a fiasco if this peaceful protest were discredited by violent protest. Such violence allows the pigheaded nuclear policy to cast itself as the protector of law and order, and to divert attention from the outrage and newly awakened mass criticism of this policy's rolling perplexity."

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