Nuclear convoy reaches destination

The convoy arrived in Gorleben after a three day journey

GORLEBEN, Germany -- A shipment of over 80 tons of nuclear waste has arrived at its destination in northern Germany.

Six trucks, each carrying a container of waste dispatched on Sunday from a French reprocessing plant, arrived with heavy police protection at a storage facility in Gorleben at about 7 a.m. (0600 GMT) on Wednesday.

The arrival marked the end of a controversial three-day journey dogged by anti-nuclear protesters trying to block its path.

Despite the demonstrations that greeted the shipment en route to Gorleben, the nuclear waste, which had travelled with a convoy of police vehicles, was met by only about 20 protesters.

"Gorleben is no safer than any other nuclear installation in Germany from a targeted attack," said Boris Jarosch, a 25-year-old student from Berlin.

Another protester, Jens Hoffmann, said: "Nuclear power is madness. There are no plans to deal with the waste. It's like taking off in a plane, but having nowhere to land it."

Police spokesman Thomas Kuhn said: "There were no notable incidents on the final stretch. It all went as we had planned."

Overnight, riot police had cleared protesters along the final 20 kilometer (12 miles) of road from the town of Dannenberg, where a crane lifted the containers from rail wagons onto the waiting trucks.

On Tuesday, police had removed activists who had chained themselves to the tracks and dangled from the trees overhanging the rails.

Security forces used batons, dogs and horses to try to keep the demonstrators at bay.

Police said they had detained 273 people while almost 100 other were treated for injuries, Reuters said.

On Monday, police moved in to end a three-hour, sit-down protest by around 600 demonstrators on a section of railway near the storage site at Gorleben.

Police said they had removed a number of concrete slabs placed near the railway line.

Nuclear power is a controversial issue in Germany, where government and industry agreed last year to gradually to phase out all reactors by around 2025.

Police dogs have been used to keep protesters along the route at bay

Germany sends its nuclear waste to France and Britain for reprocessing, but has been slow to take it back for storage because of political wrangling over where to store it and safety issues over shipping it across Europe.

Previous shipments have been hit by violence and disruption from Germany's anti-nuclear lobby.

Wednesday's delivery was only the fifth so far to Gorleben, where the special containers are placed in a hangar-like building above a disused salt mine that residents fear will become a permanent storage site.

Opponents say neither the containers nor the old mine are safe.

Shipments already were halted for four years in 1997 because of radioactive leaks on the containers.