License extensions at 17 reactors to be challenged in German constitutional court

Final passage into law of license extensions, till as late as 2034, at 17 German atomic reactors, has been accomplished with the signature of Germany's largely symbolic figurehead president, Christian Wulff. But this has sparked legal objections by Social Democratic Party controlled state governments, which charge it is an unconstitional undermining of a national consensus to close all of the country's atomic reactors by 2022 at the latest. German Chancellor Angela Merkel's overturning of the Nuclear Consensus phase out plan has led to mass protests this year -- over 120,000 people forming a 75 mile long human chain between two nuclear power plants last April; 100,000 protestors in Berlin last September; and 50,000 protestors in November blocking a radioactive waste train and trucks targeted at Gorleben, Germany's centralized interim storage site for high-level radioactive waste, and formerly proposed permanent dumpsite.