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
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.
Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive