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"Deep in an abandoned German salt mine, barrels of nuclear waste lie in a jumbled heap-untouched since the 1970s, when this picture was taken. Since the 1960s the Asse II chambers in Lower Saxony (map) have served as storage sites for more than a hundred thousand barrels of low- to medium-level nuclear waste. Low-level waste isn't considered dangerous to handle, but medium-level waste may need shielding before disposal-such as encasing reactor components in concrete-according to the World Nuclear Association, which promotes nuclear energy. In 2008 reports emerged that water leaking from Asse II since the 1980s is radioactive."

The heat has been turned up on Germany's radiation protection office after it was revealed that an old salt mine in the German state of Lower Saxony, where nuclear waste is being stored, has sustained damaged. The Federal Office for Radiation Protection (BfS) had learned late last year that pieces of the ceiling of the 750-meter (2,500-foot) deep chamber were unstable and could collapse on top of the 6,000 radioactive waste drums below.

A shipment of nuclear waste is expected to arrive at a dump in Germany despite mass protests from environmentalists. Eleven containers of treated waste were on Monday transferred from a train onto lorries in Dannenberg for the final journey to the northern Gorleben site. The train was delayed for hours after setting off from La Hague in France on Friday, as protesters clashed with police trying to block the shipment.

Thousands of anti-nuclear demonstrators were trying to obstruct a tightly guarded convoy of spent nuclear fuel on its way to a German storage facility. Near the warehouse in Gorleben in northern German, where many tons of radioactive waste are stored, more than 6,000 protesters thronged roads on Saturday, Nov. 8, just before a protest rally.

The 10,000 police at the scene were ordered to clear the road before the trucks departed from a railway freight yard carrying the 11 containers. They were bound for the storage site at Gorleben where tons of similar waste are already guarded round the clock.

On 7th November hundreds of protesters took to the streets of the town of Lüchow, Germany today to protest the transport of nuclear waste into the Wendland region. Their march was also in memorial of Sebastian Briaut, the French man who died while protesting the Castor transport in 2004. After the hour-long march, tensions rose as the crowd approached the road leading to the local police barracks. As student organizers encouraged those attending the 'official demonstration' to return to it, around 150 people left the official march, which organizers had planned to have turn back at the roundabout at the Saaßer Chaussee towards the center of Lüchow. This 150 instead decided to continue on, walking down Salzwedeler Landstraße, toward the police barracks.

A German study linking increased cancer rates in children with their proximity to nuclear power plants raised some eyebrows at the Blue Ridge Community Hall last week. Tipping Point, a Whitecourt-based anti-nuclear group invited German pediatrician Dr. Ernst Iskenius to present the results of the KiKK study to about 30 Whitecourt and Woodland County residents. The KiKK study was the second of two released by the German government last fall. Its results created a public outcry and debate, which is still continuing today in Europe. The first German study, published by Terschueren Hoffmann and D.B. Richardson found 14 cases of leukemia between 1990 and 2005 in children living within five kilometres from the Krummel nuclear plant in Geesthacht and another northern facility in Germany.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Sunday called for a decision on where to store radioactive nuclear material after a scandal over leaks at a depot this week sparked a row about what to do with atomic waste. Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel said last week his ministry would assume responsibility for the Asse facility in the state of Lower Saxony after he attacked the operators for presiding over years of leaks of radioactive waste.

On September 20th 2008 the Uranium Action Day is announced. One year after the big Uranium Conference in Germany it is planned to do activities in many places in different countries to refer to the bad consequences of uranium mining and the dangers of transport of such material.

Germany may be phasing out its nuclear power stations, but German group Siemens plans to cooperate with Russia's Rosatom to tap into the growing global market to build new nuclear plants. A deal could be signed in the coming months, reports business daily Handelsblatt. German industrial group Siemens is preparing to sign a nuclear cooperation deal with Russia to tap a growing global market for building nuclear power plants, German business daily Handelsblatt reported on Wednesday.

A 20-year-old telegram has heated up Germany's debate over nuclear power in the run-up to parliamentary elections later this month. The telegram seems to substantiate charges that politicians in the government of former Chancellor Helmut Kohl pressured scientists to recommend an old salt mine as a potential site for long-term nuclear waste storage. The debate is part of a larger controversy over whether or not the country should phase out its nuclear power by 2022, as current law stipulates. The country's two center-right parties, which have a slight lead in the latest polls, have said they want to let the country's nuclear power plants run up to a decade longer. The country's three, main, left-leaning parties support the phaseout. As many as 50,000 people attended a march against nuclear power in Berlin last weekend. The long-running controversy over the site will seem familiar to observers of the debate over the proposed nuclear waste repository in Yucca Mountain, which has been defunded by the Obama Administration. Germany, like the United States, has no long-term disposal site for high-level radioactive waste.

Germany's education and research minister has warned against demonizing nuclear power after two more reactors were temporarily taken offline, adding to the controversy over the future of atomic energy in the country. German Minister of Education and Research Annette Schavan has cautioned against a demonization of nuclear power following the shutdown of multiple reactors across the country due to technical malfunctions.

Germany's education and research minister has warned against demonizing nuclear power after two more reactors were temporarily taken offline, adding to the controversy over the future of atomic energy in the country. German Minister of Education and Research Annette Schavan has cautioned against a demonization of nuclear power following the shutdown of multiple reactors across the country due to technical malfunctions. In an interview with the Abendblatt daily on Saturday, Schavan, who is a member of Chancellor Merkel's conservative Christian Democratic Party (CDU), said that those concerned about Germany's future energy supply "shouldn't demonize nuclear power."

Germany's vaunted salt mine solution for low-level nuclear waste has proven to be full of holes. Rock salt, at least while it's underground, has two main properties: It can be soft and easy to mine, and it can form a watertight seal. This helps explain why the West German government started forklifting thousands of metal drums of "low-to-medium" radioactive waste into an abandoned salt mine called Asse II during the 1960s. Asse II is named after its mountain range in the state of Lower Saxony. The mine plunges deep into the hills near Braunschweig (aka Brunswick), in the center of Germany, and politicians in Bonn regarded it during the Cold War as a test site for storage of nuclear waste. An overhead layer of rock salt would shield the mine from groundwater, and the shifting salt itself, over centuries, would seal up any fractures and finally pack the nuclear waste in a safe geological bed.

Angela Seidler, a 41-year-old tour guide at E.ON AG's Grafenrheinfeld nuclear-power plant in southern Germany, may have to find a new career before she retires. "There are about six years of work" until the plant reaches a government-mandated production limit, Seidler said. After that, she said, "it's over for Grafenrheinfeld" -- unless voters grant a reprieve in Sept. 27 elections. Seidler works at one of Germany's 17 nuclear plants, which require an extension to operate beyond deadlines imposed in 2002 by Chancellor Angela Merkel's Social Democratic predecessor, Gerhard Schroeder. They won't get it unless Merkel, who wants to keep them open, wins the majority she needs to ditch her current coalition with the Social Democrats.

In 2008, the KiKK study in Germany reported a 1.6-fold increase in all cancers and a 2.2-fold increase in leukemias, among children living within 5 km of all German nuclear power stations. The study has triggered debates as to the cause(s) of these increased cancers. This article reports on the findings of the KiKK study; discusses past and more recent epidemiological studies of leukemias near nuclear installations around the world, and outlines a possible biological mechanism to explain the increased cancers. This suggests that the observed high rates of infant leukemias may be a teratogenic effect from incorporated radionuclides. Doses from environmental emissions from nuclear reactors to embryos/fetuses in pregnant women near nuclear power stations may be larger than suspected and hematopoietic tissues may be considerably more radiosensitive in embryos/fetuses than in newborn babies. The commentary concludes with recommendations for further research.

Nuclear files could "paralyse" German regional government A German regional government says it could no longer function if it gives public access to cabinet files about the establishment of a nuclear waste dump in its area. The admission comes from the Christian Democrat (CDU, conservative) government of the northern state of Lower Saxony, where 32 years ago a previous CDU government licensed the dump near the village of Gorleben, which at the time was close to the border with former communist East Germany. Asked to make the files available to the environment committee of the Lower Saxony parliament, the premier's office refused, arguing that the government's ""Handlungsfähigkeit" would be endangered. The word translates variously as legal capacity, ability to act, capacity to act, capacity to contract. The refusal was revealed by an opposition Social Democrat MP, Andrea Schröder-Ahlers, after the latest sitting of the committee. She says she suspects that something is being hidden.

Berlin- A damaged fuel rod sought since last week has been located inside one of Germany's 12 nuclear power stations, regulators said Wednesday. The jinxed plant at Kruemmel near Hamburg was shut down for two years by a transformer fire. It was crippled again July 4 by a short circuit and was then reported to have a problem in one or more of its 80,000 fuel rods. Engineers took the lid off the reactor to find the damaged uranium rod. The problems at Kruemmel have led to calls to retire the station and re-ignited debate in Germany about nuclear power as an election approaches. Anti-nuclear activists are also highlighting mismanagement of nuclear waste dumps in old salt mines. Wolfram Koenig, president of the Federal Radiation Safety Agency (BfS), said radioactive contaminated fluid had been found to have seeped to the bottom of one such dump, the Asse mine.

RWE AG Chief Executive Officer Juergen Grossmann urged Chancellor Angela Merkel to scrap a plan to close Germany's nuclear reactors, saying an extension would protect the country from fuel price swings. "They're a predictable part of the power-generation cost" for Germany's industrial electricity users, Grossmann, who heads the country's second-largest utility, said in an interview at an energy conference in Berlin yesterday. "We hope to carry on our nuclear operations in Germany." RWE and competitor Energie Baden-Wuerttemberg AG are trying to build support before Merkel's September re-election bid. While she's in favor of extending nuclear power plants, her Social Democratic coalition partners oppose it. If she's able to form a partnership with the liberal Free Democratic Party, that may open the way to keeping reactors operating beyond 2021. "We don't need to mention that I would be in favor of extending the lifespan of nuclear power plants," Merkel told delegates at the conference.

Chancellor Angela Merkel's party ruled out for the first time building nuclear-power plants in Germany and backed plans to develop electric-car technology, aiming to broaden its appeal for Sept. 27 national elections. While Merkel's Christian Democratic Union and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union, agreed to stick to a policy of extending the lifespan of existing atomic plants, their joint campaign program presented in Berlin today describes nuclear power as merely a "bridge" to greater use of renewable energy.

A French anti-nuclear activist nicknamed the "unbending squirrel" managed to stop a train carrying uranium from a German processing plant in spectacular fashion, police said on Tuesday. Cecile Lecomte, 27, rappelled down a motorway bridge near the western city of Münster late on Monday night to hang suspended over a rail line, forcing the 25-car train carrying the enriched nuclear fuel to stop. Police climbing specialists then had to dangle off the bridge to remove her. It was the third time that Lecomte had succeeded in blocking trains from the Gronau processing plant in western Germany.