Vandals smash railway building windows in nuclear protest

Vandals smashed dozens of windows at a German railway building in an apparent protest against the planned resumption of nuclear waste transports to Germany, police said.

Vandals smashed dozens of windows at a German railway building in an apparent protest against the planned resumption of nuclear waste transports to Germany, police said.

Nearly 80 windows were broken in the pre-dawn attack in eastern Berlin, and graffiti at the scene criticized the national railways for helping transport radioactive waste that originates at German nuclear power plants, police said.

No one was in the building at the time of the attack. The assailants were at large.

German nuclear waste shipments are due to resume next week with a transport from a reprocessing plant in France to a storage site in northern Germany. The German government suspended transports in 1998 out of safety concerns but has since tightened safety rules.

Anti-nuclear protesters have called for rail blockades to disrupt the shipment and police in several German states are on alert. In the 1990s, nuclear waste transports often led to battles between police and demonstrators.

Germany's Greens party, which grew out of the anti-nuclear movement and now sits in the government, has endorsed only peaceful demonstrations.

Rebecca Harms, one of the party's most prominent anti-nuclear activists, called Wednesday's attack "dumb and dangerous."

Interviewed on InfoRadio, she said such vandalism hurt the Social Democrat-led government's continuing effort to press German utilities to phase out nuclear power.