Urenco Deutschland Gmbh is owned by two German energy companies, E.On and RWE. In early May, I was presented with an unexpected opportunity to attend a shareholders’ meeting held by one of these companies. On the one hand, those present at the meeting can ask questions of the board of directors that the chairman of the board is obliged to answer right there and then. Taking into consideration that the immediate participants of the operations involving radioactive waste go to great lengths to conceal the true scope of the transport and other details of their deals, this meeting was probably my only chance to find out the truth. On the other hand, this was also an opportunity to open the eyes of several thousand E.On shareholders on what E.On’s daughter company Urenco was up to in Russia. In other words, this was an opportunity not to miss – but first I had to become a shareholder.

On the morning of May 3, one of the stockowners sympathetic with my cause placed his 150 E.On shares into my management. A little more stock was also placed into the management of several colleagues of mine from Slovakia, Finland and Germany. Upon the transfer, the ecological delegation headed toward the main conference hall in Essen.

At nine in the morning, thousands of shareholders were filing diligently into the conference hall past us, posted at the entrance with a slogan that read “E.On gets the profits, all the rest get the risks.” Our group of six activists had the attention of around 60 police officers who had been specially dispatched to oversee our gathering, but had no legal authority to touch a shareholder. That would have been the purview of the company’s security service – but security guards had decided to ignore us: There were journalists around who were showing a keen interest in the protesting shareholders.

The huge complex hosting the shareholders’ assembly was outfitted with state-of-the-art equipment: Monitors were installed to view the presentations remotely in every room except the hall where the meeting was taking place, and audiobroadcasts were set up in the restrooms.

It should be noted that half of the roughly four thousand shareholders present had come to the meeting with the main purpose of having something to eat and a drink. Already an hour into the meeting, the hall had lost a significant portion of its audience. An enormous lunch bar fixed between the entrance and the conference hall was serving free food and non-alcoholic beverages all day long. Two more spacious rooms were available off the bar where one could sit at a large monitor with food in one’s lap.

The chairman of the E.On board of directors was delivering a one-hour-long report. Besides talking about the main figures of the company’s economy, the chairman touched on the political aspect as well – that of extending the terms of operation of German atomic reactors beyond those stipulated in the federal law. As he concluded his speech, he urged the audience to refrain from political statements. Out of ten shareholders and company employees who took the podium after him, seven said nothing beyond that the reactors must not be shut down.

When the second speaker reiterated the first, it could still be ascribed to a coincidence. At the end of that speech programme, though, it was no longer a matter of doubt that the whole performance had been masterminded by the company. The board chairman was only smiling contentedly. He must have thought there were no political connotations in any of that talk about revoking a law which regulates nuclear power plant shutdowns and which is the cause of such a heated debate in today’s Germany.

The next speech was apparently much less to the chairman’s liking. This was no longer the show they had worked so hard to stage. Heffa Schuking, head of the German ecological organisation Urgewald, told the audience about the safety defects that appropriate authorities had found at German nuclear power plants.

Such an unambiguous substantiation of the need to shut the sites down clearly knocked the board chairman of his seat. If that were a boxing match, I would have called it a knockdown.

I had to go next. Because I only speak English, the plan for my speech was the following: I do an intro in English and then the main part in German so that less time would be spent on interpreting my speech for the audience.

Apparently, the previous speech had the chairman annoyed enough that he turned my microphone off already on my second sentence. He said speeches were only allowed in German and proceeded to argue with the interpreter who came to my defence insisting I had the right to speak.

The microphone was turned back on and I continued with my report. The gist of it was that E.On’s daughter company Urenco sends radioactive waste to Russia for burial, which is ethically unacceptable and kind of illegal both in Russia and in Germany. Making no effort to hide his exasperation, the board chairman turned off my microphone again. And again, my interpreter Simona started to explain with calm confidence that the chairman had just a little bit to wait, the German part would begin soon. Finally, the chairman must have realized it did not behove him to squabble with a shareholder while the latter was giving a speech. In the end, as this bickering resulted in his overwhelming defeat, he had no choice but to turn the microphone back on once again.

What happened was that, basically, twice in the space of 15 minutes, this delicate woman (Simona is on the left in the photo above) floored a guy who takes home five million euros for the position of the board chairman alone (this is just one of a few cushy job descriptions he enjoys). It is worth noting that he had enough good judgment to stop debating at that point. My interpreter and I finished my report without any further disturbance, mixing German and English a few more times – which probably ticked off the chairman, but also earned us a few rounds of applause from the audience.

Before this meeting, shareholders’ assemblies would as a rule be attended by no more than a couple of environmentalists at a time. This was the status quo that most company boards had long got accustomed to. We had prepared the surprise of their lives by coming as a delegation of six, each of whom was, at least technically, a shareholder.

When I was finished, all the other ecologists-cum-shareholders took the podium, one by one, criticising E.On for its participation or interest in new nuclear power plant projects in Finland and Slovakia, as well as its involvement in the transport of nuclear waste to Germany’s Gorleben, a city which has become a symbol of civil opposition to the atomic industry.

By the way, my colleague from Slovakia, who was not speaking in German either, didn’t face any of the difficulties that I had encountered with E.On’s board, who by then didn’t venture to utter a peep. Last to speak from our “ecological fraction” was another German, a friend and a colleague of mine, Matis Ajkov, who slammed the board with a half-hour’s worth of criticism aimed at the German branch of Urenco, which is co-owned by E.On.

Some of the slating they got was for the leak of centrifuge technologies to Pakistan and Iran. By then, the board were presenting a pitiful sight. They resembled a bunch of zombies frozen in their seats. In boxing terminology, this blow, the finale in a series of six environmentalist speeches, was a knockout punch well confirmed by the audience’s applause. For that whole day, deepest grief would be imprinted on the E.On’s directors’ faces. There were other speakers as well, with reports of 20 minutes or less. But no other presentation generated so much “interest” on the part of the board or sparked such a generous welcome from the audience.

The chairman didn’t say much in response to our questions. He said that since 1996, Urenco had sent around 80,000 tonnes of radioactive waste to Russia. That there are no provisions guaranteeing that this radioactive material would be shipped back to Europe in the contracts. That another 20,000 tonnes would be sent to Russia before 2009. And that no, E.ON doesn’t have a copy of the contract available to show us. And a few more sound bites here and there.

In all likelihood, this meeting will make it into history – as a stockowners’ assembly most pervaded with issues related to atomic energy. Around 70 percent of the time the meeting lasted was spent on discussions about nuclear power plants and export of radioactive waste into Russia. Several people approached me and my colleagues after our speeches to express their support. We barely had time to help ourselves to what little was left in the huge tin coffee cans in the abandoned snack bar.

The day’s entertainment was capped by a vote. We graded the board of directors’ performance as “not satisfactory,” handed in our ballots and left the ranks of company shareholders. The stock was returned to their owners – at least until next year.