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BERLIN (AFP) – solon than 200,000 grouping on Sat took to the streets in FRG to protest against thermonuclear power, organisers said, upping the pressure on Chancellor Angela Merkel on the daytime of a grave land election.

Marches took locate in Hamburg, Cologne, Munich and the crowning Berlin, aweigh of the balloting in wealthy Baden-Wuerttemberg on Sunday, where thermonuclear forcefulness was ordered to be a key issue.

The important organisers, Ausgestrahlt, said 210,000 grouping had condemned conception in the demonstrations, marching under the flag "Fukushima Means: No solon Nuclear Power Stations."

Police said that more than 100,000 had condemned conception in the protests in songster alone, double the sort organisers had expected.

Hailing the protests as "Germany's biggest ever dissent against thermonuclear power," Ausgestrahlt said, "the government's respond staleness be to invoke the reactors off."

"Today's demonstrations are meet the prelude to a new, strong, anti-nuclear movement. We're not feat to let up until the plants are eventually mothballed," said Jochen Stay, an Ausgestrahlt spokesman.

Merkel decided on March 14, in reddened of the thermonuclear crisis in Japan, to notice a three-month moratorium on extending the lifetimes of Germany's 17 reactors and to closed soured the oldest seven temporarily pending land checks.

Despite her protests to the contrary, electors believed this move to be electioneering, and reportable comments from the frugalness minister ostensibly confirming this additional to Merkel's woes aweigh of Sunday's must-win election.

Her standpat CDU band was bracing for a tight result in the south land they hit held for 58 years.

Polls exhibit that the ecologist Greens, spurred by anti-nuclear view in the country, could make story and entrepot enough votes with the contestant Social Democrats (SPD) to command with Germany's first-ever Green land premier.

"We Must Learn from Japan: Nothing Is Impossible," feature digit placard in songster as a float manufactured by the Greens portrayed a thermonuclear reactor existence consigned to the "Dustbin of History."

A massive March 11 earthquake prompted a disrespectful tsunami in Nihon that knocked discover the chilling systems for the six reactors of the Fukushima plant.

This led to suspected partial meltdowns in threesome of them and gas explosions and fires that hit ripped through the facility.

Merkel has said that "everything has changed" in reddened of Japan's poorest post-war hardship and that FRG should aim to opening thermonuclear noesis "the kinda the better."

Nevertheless, she has said thermonuclear needs to help as a "bridge technology" patch Europe's crowning frugalness accelerates a transition to alternative sources of forcefulness much as wind power.

Monika Flemming, a 53-year-old saleswoman, said: "I came here to call for thermonuclear reactors to be stopped because I unwaveringly impart to expire of old geezerhood kinda than irradiation poisoning."

"It's my first demonstration, but I've ever been against nuclear.

"I don't conceive it's ever been so urgent as now. I also intend the feeling that this is the moment to intend things done, because public instrument is changing," she added.

Another protestor, Curd Knuepfer, a 26-year-old political power student, said: "I conceive Fukushima was a wake-up call for the Teutonic people."

"Germans hit ever been against thermonuclear power," he added.

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