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When government geologists found a salt deposit unsuitable for the planned German nuclear waste repository, top government officials ordered them to change their findings. This has been revealed by Professor Helmut Röthemeyer, pensioned former department head of the Federal Physics Technology Agency (PTB), which examined the salt deposit at the northern village Gorleben in the mid-80s. The PTB commissioned deep drilling of the salt dome and because of what they revealed it advised against using the salt as a final nuclear repository. Röthemeyer told the Berliner Tageszeitung newspaper that because of the risks in exploring the salt and because of public opposition the PTB suggested investigating other sites. The drillings hadn't delivered the hoped-for findings, he said. Röthemeyer and his colleagues had discovered that in the Ice Age a runnel was gouged through the stone covering the salt making the stone "unable to hold back contaminations from the biosphere over time".

"Germany's plan to develop a site to store its most dangerous radioactive waste may require 25 more years before a decision can be made, the environment minister said. An initial phase of the plan will look into safety issues at Gorleben, a proposed repository for high-level radioactive waste from power plants, as well as the necessary approvals required from state and regulatory bodies, Norbert Roettgen said today at a briefing in Berlin. Germany, like the U.S., has struggled to find how to dispose of cancer-causing wastes from its 17 nuclear power plants. The country has said it may extend operation of some of its newest nuclear plants that produce yet more radioactive material. "

Berlin - As a trainload of nuclear waste crossed Germany Sunday, riot police drew batons to push back demonstrators who tried to block a railway line. On Saturday, the train had been delayed for more than 11 hours by three militants who chained themselves to a track near the French border. Police had to carefully dismantle a lump of concrete buried under the track to detach the trio. Protesters later tried to occupy another railway line, 500 kilometres to the north, where the train was expected to arrive on Monday. The remains of nuclear fuel rods are bound for a German nuclear waste warehouse.

This weekend over 15,000 people turned out to disrupt a delivery of nuclear waste across Germany -- one of the largest such protests in years. The German press expects the nuclear issue to play a big role in next year's election campaign. When the government of former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, which saw his Social Democrats paired with the Greens in a governing coalition, announced in 2000 that the country was phasing out its nuclear power plants, it seemed that decades of anti-nuclear activism in Germany could be laid to rest. Indeed, protests against atomic power virtually disappeared from the calendars of political ativists.

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.

German riot police confronted activists along the route of the nuclear waste transport.