German clashes over nuclear cargo

A shipment of nuclear waste is expected to arrive at a dump in Germany despite mass protests from environmentalists.

Eleven containers of treated waste were on Monday transferred from a train onto lorries in Dannenberg for the final journey to the northern Gorleben site.

The train was delayed for hours after setting off from La Hague in France on Friday, as protesters clashed with police trying to block the shipment.

Several demonstrators even managed to cement themselves to the tracks.

A number of protesters are continuing to block access to the Gorleben site in Lower Saxony.

"We will be the last to be removed, but we will keep going. I don't care if it's tomorrow or the day after tomorrow - I'm staying here," Katrin Heineberger from Germany's Green Youth Party said.

"I want to bloc the transporter and stop it from making its way to the storage facility," she said.

Some 16,000 police have been deployed across Germany to ensure the shipment reaches its final destination.

Germany has no reprocessing facilities of its own, and each year it sends large quantities of used fuel to France and Britain for treatment.

The treated waste is then returned to Gorleben, which has been the focus of anti-nuclear protests for more than 30 years.

The government in Berlin has approved plans to phase out its nuclear energy by about 2020.