Quiet arrival for nuclear shipment

The shipment was delayed throughout its journey

LONDON, England -- Germany's first nuclear waste shipment to Britain in three years arrived after surviving five-days of demonstrations.

The shipment of five containers of spent fuel rods from two southern German nuclear plants arrived in the northwest town of Barrow-in-Furness on Sunday.

Despite its protest-plagued journey involving sit-ins and smoke bombs no protesters were to greet its arrival, a spokesman for the British government-owned company British Nuclear Fuels, said.

"It arrived today very quietly," spokesman Bill Anderton told the Associated Press.

He added the final, 50-mile (80-kilometre) rail journey to the Sellafield reprocessing plant will be made "during the early part of this week."

The protests had begun on Tuesday when anti-nuclear campaigners had staged a sit-in on a road near at the Neckarwestheim power plant in the southern state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, briefly delaying part of the shipment.

In northern France, protesters threw smoke bombs onto a rail line on Thursday, slowing a train carrying the waste to the port town of Dunkirk.

Germany halted all nuclear shipments to Britain in 1998 after it emerged that radioactive emissions from the special containers had exceeded safety limits for years.

It also suspended dealings with Sellafield plant last year in the wake of a scandal over alleged fake records at the British plant.

Germany resumed nuclear shipments to France earlier this month for processing at the Cogema plant at La Hague, near the English Channel.

Delayed nuclear waste heads to UK
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