Police early Sunday ended an 11-hour protest blockade that held up a tightly-guarded rail convoy of spent nuclear fuel, freeing the train to enter Germany on its way to a waste dump, DPA reported. The waste train had been waiting nearby at Lauterbourg, France. A spokesman for German police said officers had been able to remove the last of three demonstrators who had chained themselves to the tracks by embedding their arms into a huge lump of concrete under the track. Earlier, police had managed to drill away enough of the concrete to detach one protester's bonds at the small border town of Berg. Police said they had to be careful not to harm the protesters. A federal police spokesman said the removal of one protester's bonds enabled police to understand how the other two had secured themselves. German rail officials would determine whether the tracks needed to be repaired after the blockade. The train had originally been expected at 1230 GMT Saturday in Woerth, where the French locomotive was to have been changed out for a German locomotive. The transport began Friday evening in France. The convoy is headed to the warehouse in Gorleben in the northern German countryside, where many tons of radioactive waste are stored. Some 14,500 demonstrators gathered there Saturday to protest, police said. The anti-nuclear movement seeks the immediate closure of all nuclear power stations and believes that waste transport and storage is unsafe. Police expect picketers to try forcibly to block the convoy route through Germany. Germany is studying whether to use an old salt mine near the warehouse in Gorleben as long-term storage for the waste, which originated in German power stations.
