Violent German Protest Slows N-Waste Delivery

Riot police battled back more than 3,000 protesters and cleared burning roadblocks Wednesday for a truck bringing nuclear waste to a storage site.

More than 30 people were injured as police used truncheons, tear gas and water cannon to keep demonstrators at bay. Many protesters hurled rocks and bottles with slingshots and set wood and hay ablaze on the road. One fired a starter pistol at a police helicopter.

The transport provided a focal point for German foes of the government’s nuclear power program. Juergen Trittin, a member of Parliament from Germany’s Greens party, charged the police action was part of “the brutal methods of the nuclear state.”

Slowed by the clashes, the flatbed truck took six hours for the 11-mile final leg of the transport from France. The nuclear waste container was unloaded from a train at dawn to be trucked to the storage site at Gorleben in northeastern Germany.

About 15,000 officers protected the shipment on its two-day trip through Germany from a reprocessing plant in La Hague, France, including 3,000 on the road from the Dannenberg train station to Gorleben.

Police jogged in formation along-side the truck and dozens of police cars secured the front and rear.

At least 10 officers and 20 protesters were injured in the clashes, including a young man who was bleeding from the head. At least 28 protesters were arrested.

The nuclear waste from German power plants was returning from reprocessing in France under an agreement mandating its return to Germany for storage. Germany has no reprocessing plant.