German police clashed with anti-nuclear activists today outside a power plant before a shipment of spent fuel rods was due to be transported to France.
Riot police repelled a group of about 250 demonstrators who repeatedly tried to break through a barricade near the Philippsburg power plant in the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg in an effort to disrupt the transport. There were several skirmishes between police and the demonstrators.
A police spokesman could not immediately say whether there were injuries. But German television showed some protesters with bloodied faces and wearing bandages. Police said about 20 activists had been detained.
Several thousand police were escorting the nuclear waste, the first transport to a reprocessing plant in France in four years after France and Germany agreed in January to resume transports.
Anti-nuclear demonstrators clashed with police two weeks ago when Germany took back the first cargo of reprocessed waste from France since the German government banned the shipments in 1998 over concerns about radioactive leaks and huge protests.
Authorities used 20,000 police costing the state about DM50 million to protect the shipment on its way from France to a storage facility in the northern town of Gorleben.