After serving for decades as a storage location for German radioactive nuclear waste, the government said it would close the Gorleben mine. Locals and environmental groups have protested against the facility for years.
See a 1999 analysis by NIRS executive director, Michael Mariotte, who had attended and taken part in the 1997 protests against CASTOR shipments to Gorleben.
In October and November 2001, Beyond Nuclear's radioactive waste specialist, Kevin Kamps, served on an the Gorleben International Peace Team (GIPT). GIPT provided human rights observation during the CASTOR shipment protests at that time. Here are their findings. See GIPT's press release, here.
Protests against CASTOR shipments to Gorleben began in the late 1970s, and have continued up to the recent past. They were the heartbeat of the German anti-nuclear movement for decades on end.
After the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear power catastrophe, Germany's Social Democrats joined Germany's Green Party in an anti-nuclear policy position, calling for a phaseout of nuclear power in Germany. (The Greens had been anti-nuclear since their founding in the 1970s.)
Shortly after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear catastrophe had begun, Germany's Conservative Party also took a nuclear power phaseout policy position.
Germany's last reactors still operating will permanently shut down next year.