In a few days, a particularly radioactive “beaver train” will cross the Somme to reach La Hague and Germany. Faced with the threat of attack, protective measures are important.
A train like no other. In a few days, four radioactive containers must cross the Somme to reach Germany (and further Philippsburg, near Karlsruhe). These trains are called “beaver trains.”
The expression “Castor Transport” (for cask for storage and transport of radioactive material) refers in Germany to the transport of radioactive materials, for example to the Gorleben storage site. Certain transports are the occasion for demonstrations by movements and associations campaigning for a nuclear phase-out.
Anyone who has to cross the Somme (from La Hague, in Normandy) is no exception. Already, when the German Federal Office for the Safety of Nuclear Waste Management announced (this summer) the return of these convoys by the end of 2024, several demonstrations were organized across the Rhine.
In France, several anti-nuclear websites have very precise information on the convoy and threaten several actions. “This call is part of the calls for blockades of CASTOR trains in Germany in 2020, finally postponed; and road convoys of nuclear fuel from the EPR in October 2020, transiting from Romans-sur-Isère to Flamanville” warns one of the networks. The latter want to take inspiration from the sabotage of the railway tracks carried out the day before the opening of the Olympic Games.
Facts of sabotage
Damage has recently been committed on the old railway line which links Nançois-Tronville and Gondencourt-le-château which is intended to be put back into service for the transport of radioactive waste and was claimed on August 10.
During the night of July 28 to 29, the nuclear waste storage protection site was subject to damage which consisted in the fact that cables located in electrical cabinets or buried underground were sanctioned.
On October 28, around twenty Greenpeace activists entered the Gravelines nuclear power plant.
On November 5, a first symbolic blocking action was discovered in Demange-Baudignecourt where a concrete block wall was built on a railway line currently being rehabilitated and intended to be used for the transport of radioactive packages.
“this rail convoy of vitrified radioactive waste destined for Germany, given its symbolic nature, being the last convoy of this type, is likely to cause serious disturbances to public order.”
Cameras to monitor the beaver train in the Somme and Oise
Thus, to monitor the beaver train throughout its passage through the Somme, several cameras will be connected to the convoy. However, the places monitored are strictly limited to the route and stopping places of the convoy.
Similar orders will be issued in Oise, Aisne and the North.
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