Hot cargo:The first Castor transport

"Germany in turmoil," writes the "Neue Zürcher Zeitung" after the first Castor transport to Gorleben in Lower Saxony 25 years ago. Rightly so:sit-ins, burning bales of straw, angry activists, desperate farmers, overwhelmed police officers - the first Castor transport with highly radioactive waste from the Philippsburg nuclear power plant in Baden-Württemberg to Gorleben kept the republic in suspense for 21 hours. On April 25, 1995 at 10.30 a.m. he reached the interim storage facility. But the fight is not only raging on the streets, but also in politics.

Gorleben, an explosive political issue

In 1977, Gorleben in East Lower Saxony entered the political stage:the small, sparsely populated town near the GDR border was declared the temporary location for a "nuclear disposal center". A reprocessing plant and a repository for nuclear waste are to be built here. Gorleben becomes explosive, a political issue, a symbol for the explosive problem of nuclear waste disposal. In 1983 the so-called transport cask storage facility was completed, an above-ground concrete hall. This is where nuclear waste is to be stored for the next few decades until a repository is available.

Security concerns give way to pressure and law

But it was a good decade before the first Castor rolled towards Gorleben:controversies between the federal government and the state of Lower Saxony delayed the transports. In the summer of 1994, the Federal Office for Radiation Protection ordered the storage of a cask from the Philippsburg nuclear power plant near Karlsruhe. Above all, the Lower Saxony Environment Minister and former Greenpeace activist Monika Griefahn (SPD) reports security concerns and tries to stop the transport. In the end, she has to bow to political pressure and the judiciary.

The first Castor transport is to take place in November 1994, but the Lüneburg administrative court is able to stop the journey at the last second because the Castor was not loaded according to regulations. "In every kitchen, when baking a cake, a little baking powder can go wrong," says the newly appointed Federal Environment Minister Angela Merkel (CDU), commenting on the safety concerns, as the "Greenpeace Magazin" writes.

Merkel commits Schröder

In February 1995, Angela Merkel finally obliged the Lower Saxony Ministry of the Environment to allow the Castor transport to Gorleben. After much back and forth, the state government is forced to give in. "She hasn't been touched by any doubts," says Lower Saxony's Prime Minister Gerhard Schröder (SPD) indignantly at the woman who will later snatch the chancellorship from him.

Largest police operation in post-war history

Meanwhile, the anti-nuclear movement in Germany is experiencing a revival. Environmental activists have been protesting months in advance, organizing demos and road blockades. Occasionally there are also radical actions, for example pieces are cut out of rail tracks. But most opponents of nuclear power rely on non-violent resistance. "We remain peaceful," explains the Lüchow-Dannenberg citizens' initiative in advance.

However, they have no influence on the actions of violent opponents of nuclear power. Since the police are also expecting massive resistance, thousands of police officers and officials from the Federal Border Police from Lower Saxony, Hesse, North Rhine-Westphalia, Bavaria and Berlin are being made available for "Day X". With around 15,000 security forces, the first Castor transport was the largest police operation in post-war history.

Green light on April 24 - activists are prepared

On April 24, 1995 at 8:05 p.m. the time had come:the Castor transport started from the nuclear power plant in Philippsburg. Under a blue tarpaulin:a 120-ton Castor with nine spent fuel rods.

The train travels over 700 kilometers to Dannenberg in Lower Saxony. The closer the train gets to the north, the more often there are incidents. Tree trunks, but also people block the tracks. Activists use grapples to catch the locomotive pantographs. In the Rhine-Main area, commuter traffic comes to a standstill for an hour. On the last stretch from Uelzen to Dannenberg, railway sleepers are undermined and rails are sawn through.

After a 14-hour train journey, the train arrives at the Dannenberg loading station on April 25 at 10:30 a.m. There the hot cargo is loaded onto a truck, which starts its journey around 12 noon. The truck needs more than six hours for the last 18 kilometers. Flanked by hundreds of police officers at a run, the transport makes slow progress.

Gorleben in a state of emergency

On April 25th, Gorleben is in a state of emergency. All schools are closed, farmers organize a protest march with tractors. Thousands of police officers meet thousands of demonstrators. You see banners everywhere, "Stop Castor" or "Chernobyl is the Stalingrad of the nuclear mafia" is written on them. Anti-nuclear songs can be heard everywhere. They are "predominantly peacefully protesting citizens", as Alfred Soetbeer, spokesman for the police task force, announces.

But in order to stop the transport, activists also set fire to bales of straw and car tires on the truck route. Farmers cut down trees and block the roads. Families form sit-ins. Again and again people throw themselves in the way and have to be carried away, if necessary by force. Police officers used rubber truncheons and water cannons against demonstrators. The other side counters with flying stones. The Gorleben investigative committee later counted 35 injured. 29 people are provisionally arrested.

At 5.12 p.m. the truck passed the entrance gate of the interim storage facility. The opponents of nuclear power were certainly aware that they would ultimately not be able to stop the Castor transport. They could only delay it and thus make it more and more expensive - and have done this again and again with further Castor transports to Gorleben.