After the almost-meltdown in Sweden the German anti-nuclear movement remains passive : Melbourne Indymedia

When more than 20 years ago a mighty pressure wave blew to smithereens the roof of Block 1 of the Chernobyl nuclear power station in Ukraine and a radioactive cloud contaminated half of Europe, the West German anti-nuclear movement responded with massive protests.

For weeks many people took to the streets in dozens of cities. In Brokdorf near Hamburg (where a nuclear station was put on the grid that year) and in Wackersdorf, Bavaria (where a waste recycling plant was to have been built but ultimately wasn’t) tens of thousands of demonstrators and police battled each other at the construction fences.

During nights unknown attackers felled more than a hundred power pylons up and down the country.

Two weeks ago the Swedish power station Forsmark 1 (150 km north of Stockholm) just barely scraped past a “worst possible incident”. Research by environment activists has found that it was only minutes to a meltdown and hence a release of radioactivity comparable to that in Chernobyl.

But this time there have been no demonstrations in Germany as yet, the movement is responding reservedly or not at all to the near-catastrophe in the north. Only the initiative »Ausgestrahlt« (Radiated) around the tireless Gorleben veteran Jochen Stay a few days ago called on all nuclear opponents to send emails to the federal government and readers’ letters to the newspapers to mount “pressure for a real exit”. Stay said there would soon be advertisements with this demand in large daily newspapers.

The events in Sweden “in one fell swoop bring back into awareness the terrors of atomic energy”, says Stay. Europe had been only seven minutes away from a catastrophe like the one in Chernobyl.

»Ausgestrahlt« is an alliance of civic action groups and environment activist organisations.
“Please get active! Take part in the public debate!” Stay appeals to all potential supporters. He argues that despite the events in Sweden, in Germany the pressure from the nuclear lobby to extend nuclear power station running times will increase. “We have to oppose this together, with newspaper ads, emails, readers’ letters or whatever.”

The passivity of the nuclear opponents is not just due to the summer holidays. The once strong and politically influential anti-atomic movement has in any case lost strength and drive.

No longer a mass movement, it has most recently concentrated, and quite successfully at that, on harassing waste transports to Gorleben (temporary storage hall) or Ahaus (temporary storage hall) and most recently also the transports to and from the uranium enrichment plant at Gronau. At some locations the initiatives are struggling mostly on the litigation level against final and temporary waste deposits.

Apart from the fact that extra-parliamentary movements are currently not exactly flavour of the month, there are specific reasons for the waning of the anti-nuclear scene. Probably an essential one is that many environmentally conscious people feel themselves reasonably represented in regard to the nuclear exit after the Red-Green and by the present grand coalition, which includes the apparently steadfast environment minister, Social Democrat Sigmar Gabriel.

This although Chancellor Angela Merkel’s recent affirmation of the agreement on phased switching off of the nuclear power stations has absolutely nothing to do with the movement’s “old” demand to close down all reactors immediately.

(More in-depth information is available from “No Nukes Inforesource” at http://www.ecology.at/nni/map.php?country=Germany.)