DANNENBERG, Germany - Activists rappelled from a high bridge, broke through police lines and chained themselves to German train tracks Sunday, trying to halt a shipment of nuclear waste as they protested Chancellor Angela Merkel's plans to keep using nuclear energy.
The train, which set off Friday from a reprocessing plant in France, slowly headed toward the northern town of Dannenberg, where containers carrying 123 tons of reprocessed nuclear waste were to be loaded onto trucks for the final leg of their journey to a disputed storage site at Gorleben.
Riot police tried to stop up to 4,000 protesters making their way through the woods onto the tracks near Dannenberg ahead of the nuclear waste train. Police used water cannons and pepper spray and wrestled with activists to break up the protest, but some still reached the rail line.
Some protesters poured flammable liquid on a police vehicle and set it alight.
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Anti-nuclear protests have gained new momentum from Merkel's decision to extend the life of Germany's 17 atomic power plants by an average of 12 years.
Merkel says the move is necessary to keep energy cheap and readily available as Germany works to ramp up its renewable energy sources. Critics call the nuclear plan a windfall for Germany's biggest energy companies.
Nuclear energy has been unpopular since fallout from the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine drifted over Germany, and the country has no plans to build new nuclear plants.
Early Sunday in central Germany, a pair of activists rappelled off a 250-foot-high bridge holding an anti-nuclear banner, while about 50 others crowded onto the tracks, federal police spokeswoman Cora Thiele said.
The protest stopped the train, but police hauled the demonstrators away, and the train continued on. The two protesters who rappelled from the bridge and three others were taken into custody, Thiele said.
About 50 to 60 tractors blocked the main road between Dannenberg and Gorleben, but they were cleared away by police. The roughly 12-mile road was lined with police trucks.
The train was stopped twice more by people on the tracks. In one case, police had to dislodge three protesters who had chained themselves to the line.
Authorities gave no schedule for the shipment. The train slowly made its way Sunday evening along the single-track branch line that ends at Dannenberg, but it was unclear when it would arrive. A large group of demonstrators sat on the track.
Wolfgang Ehmke, a spokesman for a local anti-nuclear group, said blockades aimed "to delay the arrival of the shipment and at the same time mess up the timetable for the (government's) nuclear policy." He called on both sides to refrain from violence.
On Saturday, at least 25,000 people - organizers gave the figure as more than 50,000 - demonstrated peacefully outside Dannenberg.
Activists said neither the waste containers nor the Gorleben site, a temporary storage facility, is safe.
Protests against the regular waste shipments faded somewhat after a previous government embarked a decade ago on plans to phase nuclear power out entirely by 2021 - but this year Merkel's government decided to extend the life of the nuclear plants. Parliament approved the plan last month.
Germany receives waste shipments roughly every year under an agreement that sees spent fuel sent to France for reprocessing and returned for storage.
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