AN anti-nuclear activist died in France after his leg was cut off by a train transporting nuclear waste while he was sitting on a railway track, France's SNCF railway operator said today.
"The driver noticed a group of people sitting on the tracks.
"Some of them got up. He pulled the emergency brake, but one of the people remained sitting, and one of his legs was cut off and he has died," a spokeswoman for SNCF said.
The accident happened close to the town of Avricourt in eastern France, the SNCF said.
The train had left Valognes in northern France and was heading to the storage facility in the German village of Gorleben.
Anti-nuclear activists protesting against such shipments have clashed violently with police in previous years.
In 2002, protesters disrupted the passage of a train by setting tyres alight on the tracks and chaining themselves to the rails.
In the northern German town of Dannenberg, where the casks of radioactive material were to be loaded onto a convoy of trucks and driven a few kilometres to Gorleben, thousands of people protested.
Environmental group Greenpeace has said the Gorleben storage site, in a disused salt mine, is unsafe over the long term and risks contaminating ground water. |