Anti-nuclear protestors gathered in Mitterteich, Bavaria, on Sunday — the first anniversary of the accident at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan — to voice their opposition to nuclear power in general, and specifically against expanding the Temelín power plant in South Bohemia, where the Czech state-controlled power major ČEZ intends to construct two new reactor blocks by 2025.
Dieter Janecek, the leader of the German Green Party in Bavaria, which organized the protest, said residents in Bavaria and Austria should be consulted before any such plans go ahead. “We want for the citizens of Bavaria and Austria to be heard. We don’t want new reactors to be built at Temelín,” he told Cezch public radio (Český rozhlas).
They staged the demonstration close to the Czech border (Mitterteich is some 17 kilometers from the Czech town of Cheb, western Bohemia) in order to draw attention to regional opposition in Bavaria to nuclear power. “We’re protesting against nuclear energy and against Temelín in particular because it’s a short distance from our border,” one protestor told the radio station.
Around 500 people attended Sunday’s protest in Mitterteich. The organizers said they expected more, but cold weather and rain had apparently kept many away. Nevertheless, Janecek said the Bavarian Greens were planning more protests against Temelín, which lies less than 100 kilometers east of the Bavarian border, including one at the plant itself this September.
‘Memorial’ for Fukushima
Also on Sunday, more than a dozen Austrian anti-nuclear activists gathered at the Czech nuclear plant. “The state of Lower and its inhabitants are endangered by the operation of the Temelín plant,” Roland Egger, leader of the Atomstopp movement, which organized the demonstration, told the daily Mladá fronta dnes.
Atomstopp had called on South Bohemia regional governor Jiří Zimola (Social Democrats, ČSSD) to attend the “memorial” gathering. Zimola, however, refused. “It appears the event is more than a genuine memorial for the Fukushima tragedy honored by the representation of the anti-nuclear lobby; therefore, I cannot accept the invitation,” he told reporters.
Egger said in response to Zimola’s statement: “We don’t understand this stance it was simply a memorial to last year’s tragedy.”
Following the Fukushima tragedy, Germany undertook to phase out nuclear power and decommission all its nuclear plants by 2022. The Czech Republic, along with France, Britain, Sweden and Finland, have declared that they will continue to harness nuclear and press on with plans for the construction of new facilities, in the case of the Czech Republic the construction of the two new reactor blocks at Temelín.
Recently, however, doubts have been raised about the economic viability of the planned Temelín expansion.
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