German police began what they called "a game of cat and mouse" yesterday with anti-nuclear activists. The activists are determined to stop a shipment of reprocessed nuclear waste passing through the north-west of the country.
Some 1,000 activists broke through police cordons yesterday and staged a sit-in on a 400 m stretch of railway near the town of Luneburg in north Germany, where the transport is due tomorrow.
The transport of waste left a reprocessing facility on France's Normandy coast at dawn yesterday and crossed the border into Germany late last night amid high security. The shipment is destined for the town of Gorleben, where the waste is to be buried.
Police are guarding the railway line at 100 m intervals and hope to avoid a repeat of the running battles that accompanied the last transports of nuclear waste in 1997.
Shipments of nuclear waste back to Germany from reprocessing facilities in France were suspended in 1998 after fears of radioactive leaks.
Germany's Green Environment Minister, Mr Jurgen Trittin, said the shipments were necessary to ensure the phasing out of nuclear energy over the next 30 years. Environmental protesters, however, have criticised the Green Party for being traitors to the environmental cause.
