Anti-nuclear protester killed by waste train

STRASBOURG, France (AFP) - An anti-nuclear protester died in northeastern France after being run over by a train carrying nuclear waste from France to Germany, regional authorities said.

The 21-year-old man, who had chained himself to the railway near the city of Nancy, lost a leg after he was crushed by the train and died despite receiving emergency treatment at the scene.

The authorities said the accident happened in the early afternoon in the town of Avricourt after a group of eight people gathered near the main Paris to Strasbourg line, on which the nuclear transport train was travelling.

"After coming out of a corner at reduced speed, the train was apparently confronted with the group, which moved out of the way with the exception of one person, who was hit," a police statement said.

more: http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20041107/wl_afp/france_germany_nuclear

nm

Blocking trains is dangerous business... too bad to hear about it, but well, I wouldn't want the train to derail either....

your comments are too funny. (about not wanting the trail to derail) But I am sad to hear about the death of the young man, that is not funny. Blocking a train is not exactly the solution:(

it was intentional in CA.

Possibly so in france.

Knuckle draggers.

==the general principle, if man is to survive, is

ALL URANIUM INTO THE GROUND.

only small medical amounts allowed topside.

Futurists call it all "the U238 hurdle for civilizations"

pardon if i got the number wrong.

Nuclear power = nuclear bombs

Pretty obvious by now, isnt it?
Power is just an excuse to bleed off some for a bomb. Period.

and get turned to street pizza it is your own fault. Do you know that it can take miles to stop a Train?

gene pool is self cleaning...

why don't you show us?

I don't find humor in his death, but his stupidity is obvious.

A train carrying a potential weapon is NOT going to stop. If he had told someone he could have made it on the news. Gotten arrested and impressed his friends.

He picked a more creative method to kill himself than a noose. IMHO.

I feel bad for a suicidal person. If he was not suicidal he was a fucking moron. We will never no, so I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.

then he should be put in a cell too.

But that's not a call I can make from a news article.

It is very unlikely that the engineer commited murder, even if he could have stopped but didnt it wouldnt be murder.

I've heard that US trains even if they do carry nuclear waste or some other sensative material they are ordered not to stop for anything other than something that could derail them.

You wouldnt want to be in a situation where someone stopped the train and its ambushed by people who want to steal the material.

shipping cask? The Goddamned thing weighs a bazillion tons and can withstand impact from a 50mph trailer truck without breaching. Steal the material? What the f#ck are you going to do with Nuclear waste without shielding? How are you going to reprocess it? Depending on the reactivity of the waste you'd probably die stealing it. And low level waste you might as well steal from the hospital.

(OK fuck it I'm out of here this is a waste of time)

Steps should be taken to avoid an ambush. That would not include stopping for what could be beginning of a seizure.

What can you do, plant 100 pounds of high explosives and blow it in place. Creating a radiological disaster.

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thats just a stupid friggin comment

What the fuck is he doing trying to stop a train with nuclear waste by sitting on the tracks?

It wouldn't have been so funny had the train derailed. Sure the containers are meant to survive it, but the I'm sure the public would have been royally pissed off.

the weight of the train will crush any part of the human body like a grape, bones and all. even the chain used to tie him to the tracks will get squashed by the wheels.

eludes the fuck out of me.

Can't cry either.

On edit: Dr. DemoTex has a big contract with a big US railroad company. She has done time in the simulator (just like my airline simulators) and "on the line" in the locomotive. She is very impressed with the lack of visibility from the locomotive and the long distances required to stop a moving train. My best friend's dad was killed by the "Nancy Hanks" at a grade crossing near Orchard Hill, Georgia, in 1963. The train was moving fairly slowly, but could not stop. He might have had a heart attack on the crossing, or he might have committed suicide. Or maybe his car stalled and he was trying franically to re-start it. Those are the main theories.

thought he could stop a train...

Trains usually cant stop in time even if they see someone on the track.

Additionally trains carrying nuclear waste/weapons usually wont stop anyways for fear that someone is trying to steal the cargo.

All in all a more productive end than dying for one's religion, IMO.
I for one admire the depth of his passion.
Apathy should be what earns your scorn...not passion.

but he could have lived to fight another day if he'd just been a bit more intelligent about his method of protesting. Dead is dead. Can't carry on the cause when you're dead.

THere's a huge leap between apathy and smart civil disobedience.

MzPip
:dem:

had he not died?
It wouldn't have gone much beyond the membership of the French activist group...yet here it is being discussed on DU, and no doubt elsewhere around the world.
I'm sure in the right-wing groups they're chortling like madmen about it. Nuff said.

I think most of us here are discussing how silly it was for him to kill himself.

We arent discussing that we should stop shipping nuclear waste via rail.

So what was the point of his protest again?

Since the Castor transports are accompanied by massive demonstrations every single time they move. Always have been, and probably always will be.

Wrong. Was Rachel Corey's death in vain? Wrong.

were in vain, they changed nothing, only caused more death.

Did the Vietnamese monks expect the flames wouldn't consume them?

How many assumptions are people making to find something funny here?

Whatever was in the man's mind, I see nothing but a tragedy.

killing yourself to advance it is counter productive, many
intelligent people can find many, many more ways to
advance their agendas outside of sitting in front of a train.

to focus people's attention on an issue.

If you are advocating suicide as a means to further
an issue, then I'm afraid you've lost me.

http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&tab=nn&ncl=http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20041108/NUCLEAR08/TPInternational/Europe

Bear in mind also the half-dozen (at least) threads here about the Georgia man killing himself at Ground Zero who could have waved a protest sign in Georgia until he died of old age and never been noticed by anyone.
You laughed about the French protester's death, called it irony for some unexplained reason, then jumped on the straw man of the intelligence of his decision to avoid admitting you were wrong to laugh.
As you can see from the 128 international press mentions he got, even your straw man has fallen. Had he stepped out of the path of the train with his comrades we'd never have heard of it here, so tell me your more intelligent mode of protest that would have brought anything close to this much attention.

what you mean, instead of ranting like an idiot!

As I said, if you are advocating suicide as a method
to advance your agenda, then you are a complete and utter
moron, and I have nothing further to say to you. Buh, Bye!

I wondered aloud what was so amusing about this man's death since it struck me as ghoulish to be laughing about it. It was rhetorical of course because obviously there was nothing funny about it at all.
You're the only one who stuck around...first with a half-hearted defense of your schoolyard humor as being directed at the "irony" though I find myself wondering if you'd know irony if it bit you on the ass. Then you moved on to a strawman argument about the efficacy of suicide for a cause, even though it was never made clear in the article whether this death was suicide or accident.
Quite frankly, you didn't represent yourself very well in your chosen argument either, because as I pointed out the man got more attention for his cause in that one incident than he would in a lifetime of waving placards at passing trains.
Now you're making a name-calling retreat. More schoolyard behavior.
I'm neither idiot nor moron though I do confess to the occasional rant...not, however, in this instance.
I am amenable to your having nothing further to say to me, I confess. I wasn't impressed with your debating skills at all, so "buh bye" right back atcha.
:hi:

Its just fucking stupid to find humor in this story

.. that if you ARE going to do a sit-down demonstration on the rails, alert the media first! Otherwise, noone will know you're there & the train will continue.

Also, I have very, very, very, very, very little respect to those who attempts to derail or stop a nuclear train. When the train has been loaded with the uranium, it's a major hazard unless it can be effectively desposed off in a storage area. If they want to stop the nuclear trains, they should start at the source - the nuclear power plants. Because once the uranium is used, you've got to despose of it.

Trains can't stop. If a train hits you it is your fault.

He should not have been on the right of way, that is trespassing.
No one plays on lightning rods, but even if you found a lightning rod that was stuck an average of once a day ( a pretty astrnomical figure) it would still be 1% of trains on a mainline.

95% of all railroad deaths happen to non-railroad employess -- that mean that ALL of those people were trespassing, or doing something stupid at a crossing.

I'm sorry the guy dies, but it is his own fault. I'll tell you who I feel sorry for -- the Engineer. How would you feel if someone used YOU to commit suicide?

and I have nothing but the utmost respect for a locomotive.

Anyone who places themself in front of a train, for any reason whatsoever, is a fool. Period.

And the Engineer - plenty of cases of PTSD on the railroad.

I'm ashamed and angry of the callousness of some DU'ers here.

Although one needs not to agree with the aim or method of protest, it has to be stated that this guy used a peaceful method. He was not putting anyone in danger, except himself. This may seem foolish, but it is also called civil disobedience, something we might need to resort to one day. During the roll-up for the Iraq war, many activist in Europe blocked trains to prevent material transport to the war theatre. It was a huge thing in Italy! These transports of nuclear waste have been protested since many years, at the weekend this guy was killed, more than 5000 people peacefully marched at the German goal of that transport.

People have chained themselves to rails many times, police and the train companies KNOW this. The very train that killed that guy had been blocked for two hours by another group of demonstrators. Of course, the protestors face fines or jail time if they stop trains, but it's their way to keep the issue in public conciousness. To avoid accidents, police searchs and protects the railway lines in advance. In France, they fly a helicopter along the railway lines, just before the train comes. Due to some reason not known yet, it did not happen/work this time. There's some explaining to be done.