http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,589456,00.html11/10/2008
THE WORLD FROM BERLIN
The Renaissance of the Anti-Nuclear Movement
This weekend over 15,000 people turned out to disrupt a delivery of nuclear waste across Germany -- one of the largest such protests in years. The German press expects the nuclear issue to play a big role in next year's election campaign.
When the government of former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, which saw his Social Democrats paired with the Greens in a governing coalition, announced in 2000 that the country was phasing out its nuclear power plants, it seemed that decades of anti-nuclear activism in Germany could be laid to rest. Indeed, protests against atomic power virtually disappeared from the calendars of political ativists.
That, though, has changed recently. A series of revelations about leaks at a nuclear waste dump, combined with a fresh political debate about the nuclear phase-out has led to a revival of the movement. And this weekend saw the clearest evidence that the issue is still very much alive as thousands of people turned out to disrupt the transport of radioactive nuclear waste from France to a dump in Germany.
PHOTO GALLERY: A WEEKEND OF NUCLEAR PROTESTS
http://www.spiegel.de/img/0,1020,1351188,00.jpg http://www.spiegel.de/img/0,1020,1351176,00.jpg http://www.spiegel.de/img/0,1020,1351161,00.jpg Click on a picture to launch the image gallery (17 Photos)
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The center-left Süddeutsche Zeitung writes:
"In Gorleben it was much more than the repeat of a ritual. Mobilized by the Greens, many more people demonstrated this time. The protests were reminiscent of the carefully organized performance by anti-globalization protestors at the G-8 summit. The non-violent blockades were carefully prepared and attracted many noticeably young demonstrators. In this way a movement that many believed was dead could be revived."
"Perhaps the conditions at the Asse nuclear storage facility made this deployment possible. Above all, however, it is a signal to the nuclear industry and also to the chancellor and to her Christian Democrats. Many young citizens now take for granted the nuclear power phase-out that was pushed through by the SPD and the Greens. Anyone who now uses the climate crisis to put it in question, and presents nuclear power as environmentally-friendly energy, will not have any easy time of it -- rather they will provoke the renaissance of an old conflict."
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