By
The Associated Press
DANNENBERG, Germany - Protesters trying to obstruct a nuclear waste shipment attached themselves to a rail bridge over a river yesterday as the transport rumbled through Germany in the first such shipment in four years.
Police in rubber boats tried to persuade the roughly half-dozen Greenpeace activists who were dangling by ropes from the underside of the bridge to come down. The bridge is about 15 miles from the Gorleben nuclear waste dump in northern Germany where the 60-ton waste shipment was headed.
About 30 more activists took to the river in boats. Four police helicopters hovered overhead.
"Our aim is clear. We want to obstruct this transport as long as possible," Greenpeace spokesman Veit Buerger said. The transport was due to arrive late yesterday at a rail terminal from where trucks would bring the six containers - each with about 10 tons of radioactive waste sealed in 28 glass casks - to Gorleben.
The train crossed into southwestern Germany from France late Monday, delayed by about an hour by small groups of demonstrators who were cleared from the tracks by police. Protesters booed, blew whistles and placed candles on the tracks to demonstrate their opposition to the transports.
Police said they detained more than 90 people but that no one was injured.
After the delay and a change of locomotive on the border, the train continued its 375-mile trip northeast to the Gorleben dump, the focus of Germany's anti-nuclear movement. Police reported no incidents along the route overnight and yesterday morning.
Police removed hundreds of protesters from rail tracks near Gorleben Monday night. Other demonstrators loosened ties along a 50-yard section of track, leading to at least 35 arrests.
Up to 20,000 police were out in force bracing for a repeat of clashes with militant protesters that surrounded the last shipment in 1997. Authorities have promised tough action against any blockade.
"I think it's a good thing but of little use," said Gerhard Sandman, a factory worker from the eastern state of Saxony who watched the Greenpeace action but did not take part in any blockade.
Anti-nuclear activists say authorities prepared at least nine alternative routes for the transport across Germany to skirt protests.
Especially vulnerable is the final 12-mile stretch by truck. Germany's supreme court Monday upheld a 50-yard exclusion zone on each side.
The anti-nuclear protesters are hoping their stand will drive up the cost of waste shipments and convince utilities that nuclear waste transport isn't worth the cost.
The shipment involves radioactive waste left over after spent nuclear fuel from German power plants was reprocessed at a French plant.
German and French leaders agreed on a resumption of nuclear waste traffic in January, with the German government saying it had tightened safety rules for the transports since the previous administration suspended shipments in 1998 because of radioactive leaks on some containers.
Spent nuclear fuel from German power plants is sent abroad for reprocessing, but the contracts oblige Germany to take back the resulting waste.
