Finland: Entire traffic to Fennovoima-Rosatom's nuke plant construction blocked

On 6th of April, 2016, anti-nuclear activists blocked the entire traffic to the Fennovoima-Rosatom's nuclear power plant construction site at Pyhäjoki, Finland. In total the blockade lasted roughly two to two-and-a-half hours. For now, there is only one road leading to the construction site that can take the heavy machinery. This road connects to a smaller one, leading to quarries used for massive landfills now being carried out at the site. Such a detail makes the construction site quite vulnerable for different methods of direct action.

The activists blocked in total three trucks, causing the vehicles to close down the rest of the traffic. One activist climbed onto a truck roof on a road from the quarries to the connection road leading to the construction site, bringing the vehicle to stop. Two other trucks were blocked on the connection road, one by an activist equipped with a heavy-set lock-on tube. The activist locked on very close to the fuel tank of the vehicle: this, combined with the structure and material of the lock-on, proved itself to be a bit of a problem for the police. After some checking, confused looks and plenty of sighing the police moved further away, shaking their heads and trying to figure out something. After a while the truck driver called in, independently from the police, two of his colleagues to dismantle part of the truck, removing the activist with the lock-on instead of trying to open the device. - It took some good yanking, sweating, swearing and sledge hammering to take out the entire coverings of the fuel tank, the activist reported, with a wide grin.

The activist on the truck roof was eventually removed with a cherrypicker. The police had some trouble bringing the heavy vehicle onto a narrow spot on the road, only doing so after they had tried to bring the activist down via the roof window of the vehicle, failing to get it opened.

Fennovoima-Rosatom still does not have the actual construction permit for the nuclear plant it's aiming to build. The company also still lacks the plan of how and where to store the plant's nuclear waste. Fennovoima-Rosatom has until June 2016 to present the plan concerning the waste issue: if they fail to do so, the construction permit should not be legally possible to be permitted. The anti-nuclear activists still do not hold their hopes high. What is currently happening and what has been so far constructed at the site have been done under the municipality-leadership-given permits for ”landscaping” and preliminary works, such as road construction, massive clear-cuts, landfills and blastings.

At the moment the Fennovoima-Rosatom construction site works on in with a speeded-up timetable. Some of the machines work on seven days a week, truck working with the landfills drive on six days a week, from six AM to late night hours. Local residents have been contacting the protest camp over the noise and disturbance especially the heavy traffic is causing.

Looks like Fennovoima-Rosatom aimes to get us much destruction done before the soon-starting bird nesting season that theoretically should stop some of the work – and before Reclaim the Cape -action week (22.4.-1.5.2016) that will bring a nice bunch of anti-nuclear activists and other environmentalists or anti-militarists to the area.