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Activist and farmer Zachow: "The feeling that you didn't fight for nothing is really good for you"
Photo: Ricarda Richter / DER SPIEGEL
He was milking cows when he heard it on the radio early Monday morning: The first information from the report by the Federal Association for Final Storage (BGE) had leaked out that Gorleben would probably be eliminated as a nuclear waste repository.
Hans-Werner Zachow, whom everyone just calls Hansi, couldn't believe it.
First he stayed with his animals, then he prepared breakfast.
The statements on the radio became more concrete.
Cautious joy rose in him, but skepticism remained.
Is that it now?
Indeed?
After all this years?
After all the Castor transports, the tractor columns, the arguments with the police.
"If you've been resisting for over 40 years, it takes a little while for news like this to get through," he says.
"Such news."
He could also say: such a sensation.
Such a release.
It is nothing less for him and his colleagues.
The toxic waste from the nuclear industry will not be dumped in their neighborhood for centuries.
The BGE wants to have found another, suitable location by 2031; according to the first interim report, around 90 regions in Germany are geologically possible.
But the salt dome in Gorleben, that is now certain, is no longer one of the candidates.
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