The largest-ever shipment of German nuclear waste reached a reprocessing facility at La Hague near Cherbourg yesterday after a two-hour delay caused by French nuclear protesters.
Police removed protesters who chained themselves to railway tracks outside the town of Bischeim, near Strasbourg, and made four arrests.
In Darnetal, near Rouen, police had to remove sleepers that activists placed on the tracks before the train carrying the nuclear shipment could continue.
"The protests in France have a new quality," said Mr Veit Burger of Greenpeace Germany.
The shipment reached the reprocessing plant yesterday afternoon while a separate shipment continued under tight security by sea to Britain, where it is expected to reach the Sellafield plant in Cumbria tomorrow.
The nine containers carrying 21 spent fuel rods began their journey early on Tuesday morning from a plant in the southern state of Baden-Wuerttemberg under tight security.
However, protests in Germany were muted compared to the last shipment of waste in April, the first to the British plant in almost three years.
Police said only around 35 protesters tried to prevent the start of this shipment.
Spent fuel from Germany`s 19 nuclear power plants is sent abroad for reprocessing. The government halted all shipments in 1998 after radiation leaks were found in some shipping containers, but shipments resumed in March.
Germany's nuclear plants will be decommissioned over the next 30 years, according to an agreement reached by the government with the industry last June. Until then the plants have contractual obligations to take back and store the spent fuel that is sent abroad for reprocessing.
