Some 200,000 in Germany protest nuclear power

BERLIN: Some 200,000 people on Saturday turned out in large German cities to protest against the use of nuclear energy in the wake of Japan Fukushima reactor disaster, police and organizers.
In Berlin alone more than 100,000 took to the streets of the capital to urge the leaders of Germany immediately abolish nuclear energy, the spokesman of the police Jens Berger. Organizers said some 210,000 people marched to the "warns Fukushima: Pull the Plug on all nuclear power plants" rallies in four major cities.
"We can no longer bear the risk of nuclear catastrophe," Germany's BUND environmental pressure group said.
The disaster of Japan Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Facility triggered Conservative government of Angela Merkel last week to order a temporary closure of seven of the country's oldest reactors until safety investigations complete. Officials have suggested for several of them may never return to service.
The protesters shouted "extinguish", urging the government to close the country's 17 reactors for good. They also held a minute's silence in memory of victims of Japan March 11 earthquake and tsunami.
In the northern port city of Hamburg was found about 40,000 and more than 25,000 were in the streets of Munich in the south, police said. Cologne police did not provide a figure and referred to the estimation of the organizer of 40,000 demonstrators. Police in Hamburg and Berlin said that the number of final turnout may be even higher.
Nuclear energy has been very unpopular in Germany since the radioactivity of the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, drifted across the country.
A center-left government a decade ago wrote a plan to abandon the technology for the good by 2021, but the Merkel government, last year it changed to extend the life of the plant by an average of 12 years. In a complete U-turn, the government has now put that plan on hold.
The cascade of failures at the plant in Fukushima, Japan has reignited the political debate on the use of nuclear energy in Germany, Europe's largest economy, and the opposition that many have called to close all reactors, even before 2020.