ANTINUCLEAR DYNAMITE


Facts show the antinuclear saboteurs to be right. At the same time they show up the pointlessness of calling for referendums or petitions.

Two giant pylons linking the shunting plant of Albertville near Lyons to the same type of plant in Rondissone were severed on September 10th 1990. This action, which should be seen within the framework of the continuous ecological and antinuclear struggle being carried out against the Italian eleetricity company, the ENEL, was carried out in the region known as Baldissero Canavese, 40 kilometres from Turin.
This line is used by the ENEL to transport electricity produced by the French nuclear station at Creys Malville better known as the Superphenix, through the Small San Bemard pass. At the time of the action the station had been closed for two months for maintenance work.
On this occasion the media went to town, dedicating much space to news of what had happened, supported with an impressive amount of technical detail.
In this way we know just about everything about the way this antinuclear sabotage was carried out, from the time (about 6.20am), to the fact that three explosive charges were used a few seconds apart, and that they completely uprooted maxipylons number 223 and 224 about 300 hundred metres from each other, pulling down about a kilometre of electrie cables.
The first to fall to the ground was the one near the plain. After having rendered it useless, i.e. sawn the two downhill legs, the two uphill ones were carefully mined with 200 grammes of gelatine explosive of the kind used in quarries. The poor thing did not remain long in that uncomfortable position therefore. The explosion, a liberation for both pylons, reduced them both to the same condition thirty seconds later. The second one, falling into the valley below, landed on a secondary 15,000 volt line and also put it out of use. It had been used for supplying eleetricity to the surrounding villages.
The damage caused to the ENEL by this antinuelear sabotage was estimated to be the equivalent of over a million pounds.
For those interested in statistics, this is the fourth act of sabotage that has been attempted against that particular electric line which was built in spite of the many protests by people of the area and which began functioning in 1987.
The first attack took place on September 18 1988 at Vallo Caluso; the second, on September 10 1989 at Settimo Torinese; the third on March 3 1990 at Are di Caluso. The first two attempts failed as the pylon, although thoroughly sawn through, had resisted and not fallen. In the attack at Settimo explosives were used for the first time. In that carried out in the Are di Caluso area, a flat area, the first maxi-pylon to successfully be slain was 45 metres high and weighed 6 tons, similar to the one at Baldissero. One should remember that in 88 and 89 the power lines that start out from the nuclear station at Caorso were also attacked. The same technique was used.
For those who wouid like to know the best tested and most likely to s cceed technique used to fell pylons: two of the four supports are sawn at the base and the other two are mined. The explosion cuts them in half and the weight of the cables completes the work making it split in half and fall to the ground.
For once modem technology seems to have worked against itself in the form of an electric saw fed by a generator and fitted with a sileneer. According to the experts, the most commonly used explosive is simple gelatine with a nitroglycerine base contained in cartridges, better known as sticks of dynamite, with a slow combustion detonator and fuse. According to one expert a 250-300 gram charge is enough to cut through an ENEI, 45 metre support. Probably, still according to the same expert, the antinuclear saboteurs who made the two maxi-pylons 90 crash to the ground, seem to have used double that amount, in order to be sure. A crude technique in his opinion. But quite an effective one, given the results.
The importance of this antinuclear sabotage is that the plant is a key link for transporting energy to Italy from the rest of Europe, and amounts to about 40 per cent of the electrie power acquired by the ENEL yearly in Europe. Its transporting capacity
is 3 thousand megawatts a year.
This has undoubtedly been a very significant act of antinuclear sabotage, in that it struck one of the nerve centres of the network of interconnection and putting crisis for a number of hours the whole national electricity supply. The ENEL's system for the transporting of electric power is a network which means they were able to bypass the breakdown and link up to other suppliers in Switzerland, Yugoslavia or Austria.
Once again, after this event, a number of newspapers with little imagination, linked the sabotage to the review Anarchismo.
This constant reference to the review, is due to the fact that in 1988 it was "guilty" of having published a recipe of anarchist culinary skill in the field of sabotage in the form of instructions for felling pylons, signed by an anarchist group that operates the the sector.
Finally, we should not forget that on the wave of the recent rise in petrol prices due to the armed conflict in the Persian Gulf, the use of nuelear energy the budget to be destined to the ENEA exclusively for research, which is already being spent on safe (sic) nuclear power. There are also industrial agreements with the Ansaldo for the restructuring of 16 soviet power stations with gas turbines, this in the framework of an electricity supply from the USSR.
Nuclear power has never been stopped in the research laboratories, and not much time will pass before new nuclear power station with second generation reactors naturally passed off as "ultrasafe" will be built.
It is obvious in the light of this that the struggle carried out by the antinuclear saboteurs against the ENEL is the only valid methodological choice against those against that of the institutionalist one of the pacifists. Contrary to what the newspapers and those working for the conservation of this system of domination say, what we have been talking about is turning out to be, without any doubt, the only practical method for putting the produetion of death out of use.
The use of sabotage as direct revolutionary action is the dividing line that separates coherent antinuclear ecologists from the whole parainstitutional swamp that by proposing petitions or public referendums aims at rendering inoffensive any real opposition against the projects of dominion put into act in the territory of State and capital.