German police have dragged away hundreds of demonstrators trying to stop a train shipment of radioactive waste.
About 1,000 protesters had occupied a 500-metre stretch of rail track outside the town of Wendisch-Evern.
The train is carrying 60 tons of radioactive waste to the Gorleben nuclear waste dump.
On another stretch of track, police pushed a group of about 250 protesters up the embankment and away from the rail line.
Some protesters linked hands to slow down the police action, chanting "Is this democracy?"
Earlier, police had cut down Greenpeace activists who attached themselves by ropes to a nearby rail bridge.
The activists and about 30 others who took them to the bridge in boats were detained after the six-hour protest. Police said there were no injuries, though some activists apparently fell into the river.
The shipment of nuclear waste is returning to Germany after being reprocessed in France. Trucks will be taking the waste containers from a rail terminal in the North German town of Dannenberg to the waste dump.
Up to 20,000 police were in place to deal with the estimated 2,000 protesters, following the clashes with militants that surrounded the last shipment in 1997.
Ms Heidi Klein, a spokeswoman for a protest group whose symbol, a large yellow X, has appeared on walls and roads across the country, said: "It's about making these transports so expensive they're impossible to carry out."