German riot police tried Monday to break up a human blockade of a radioactive waste disposal site in the country's biggest anti-nuclear protests since 2001. In a sign of the fierce popular opposition to nuclear power in Germany, security forces in riot gear began extracting and carrying one-by-one some of the roughly 1,000 demonstrators away from the entrance to the Gorleben waste dump in northern Germany, a police spokesman said. The demonstrators, many of whom had braved cold, damp conditions to camp outside the site for several days, were seeking to block the arrival at the site of 11 trucks containing between them 123 tonnes of radioactive waste.
The shipment had already seen the biggest and most violent anti-nuclear protests for years as it made its way by train from France over the weekend, with 16,000 police deployed against some 15,000 protestors along the route. Police had used truncheons to disperse protesters and used water cannon to put out barricades set on fire by activists.
As a result the train, which left a retreatment centre in western France on Friday, made it to the town of Dannenberg almost 14-and-a-half hours behind schedule, police said. There it was transferred onto lorries on Monday morning and was due to embark on the final 20-kilometre (12-mile) journey by road -- but not until the blockade at Gorleben had been cleared, authorities said.
Police said they expected this to happen by the end of the day but the protesters were not leaving without a struggle, with activists doing everything they could to hinder the authorities.
A few kilometres from Gorleben, activists built two tall cement pyramids, chaining four demonstrators to each, and parked 37 tractors along the route. "We will stick it out," one young female protester said on rolling news channel N-TV.
Environmentalist groups have for years demanded that the shipments be stopped due to possible radiation leaks and security risks. In March 2001, 30,000 police were deployed to halt protests in the largest single security operation in postwar Germany.
Environmental pressure group BI Umweltschutz said Monday that the containers were emitting stronger radioactive rays than is allowed on public roads, calling it "irresponsible" to subject police and demonstrators to such a health risk.
The German government has approved plans to mothball the last of its 17 reactors by about 2020, and polls show a majority of people in Western Europe's most populous country oppose nuclear power.
But Chancellor Angela Merkel has called for the process to be slowed down over fears it will be impossible to slash greenhouse gas emissions without nuclear energy, which produces a quarter of the country's electricity. Skyrocketing energy costs have also sparked the calls to reconsider the phase-out.
The head of Germany's Green Party, which was in government with Gerhard Schroeder's SPD when the decision to phase out nuclear energy was taken, said that opposition to nuclear power had been less visible in recent times.
"But when it comes to it, it can be mobilised," Reinhard Buetikofer said. "The peaceful protest by 16,000 people on Saturday and the numerous actions along the route have shown that people are firmly opposed to nuclear power," the head of the Greens' parliamentary fraction Volker Beck said.
The lawmaker called the protests a "huge success."