page_title: Gorleben
section_title: Interim storage unit for radioactive waste
hierarchical_section_title: Gorleben / Nuclear Waste Repository / Interim storage unit for radioactive waste
caption_attribution_description: Bündnis 90/Die Grünen protest against nuclear energy near nuclear waste disposal centre Gorleben in northern Germany where a trainload of treated waste arrived from France. The signs say, "Only the risk is certain. Atomic power? No, thanks.!"
context_page_description: Gorleben is a small municipality in the Gartow region of the Lüchow-Dannenberg district in the far north-east of Lower Saxony, Germany, a region also known as the Wendland.
  Gorleben was first recorded as a town by the rulers of Dannenberg in 1360; there was a fort on the site. The name "Gorleben" probably comes from Goor and leben.
  Gorleben is known as the site of a controversial radioactive waste disposal facility, currently used as an intermediate storage facility but planned to serve with the salt dome Gorleben as a future deep final repository for waste from nuclear reactors. It has attracted frequent protests from environmentalists since the 1970s.
context_section_description: Today in Gorleben there are two interim storage units for radioactive waste. The Gorleben transport container storage unit (Transportbehälterlager Gorleben) is used for short-term storage of spent fuel elements and for vitrified, highly radioactive waste from German nuclear reprocessing plants. The fuel elements and vitrified waste block containers are in dry casks standing in a hall above ground and cooled by the surrounding air. Permission has been granted to store 420 dry casks on the site.
  In April 1995, the first shipments of nuclear waste were sent to the interim storage facility at Gorleben. They included spent fuel from several German reactor sites and high-level nuclear waste from reprocessing facilities in France. The anti-nuclear movement was able to concentrate its efforts on these so-called Castor transports, creating media mega-events that would dominate national media coverage for several days. 
  The first transport in April 1995 included a total of just two casks but mobilized 4,000 protesters and 7,600 police; the second transport in May 1996 included a single cask coming from the La Hague reprocessing plant and required a police force of 19,000. The third transport in March 1997 included a total of six casks, and it faced 10,000 protesters and 30,000 police. 
  As with earlier anti-nuclear protests in the 1970s and 1980s, at Wyhl and Brokdorf, these demonstrations turned very violent. The government’s handling of these protests was often seen to be disproportionate and, in 1990s unified Germany, increasingly out of place, even by the broader public.
caption: Anti-nuclear protest near nuclear waste disposal centre at Gorleben in northern Germany, on November 8, 2008.
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