Woerth – 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.

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.

The issue has become controversial after revelations that another salt mine dump, near Wolfenbuettel, has developed leaks and cracks.

The convoy Saturday, carrying 17 tons of waste encapsulated in 100 tons of glass, was the 11th over the years to carry spent waste to the small town. Each shipment has faced fierce demonstrations.

More than 16,000 German police were detailed to protect the convoy.

Sabotage attacks disrupted high-speed passenger rail services Saturday in both France and Germany. There were no claims of responsibility, but similar attacks have coincided with waste shipments in the past.

Police in Germany said they could not rule out a link between three fires in signalling equipment on the high-speed line between Hamburg and Berlin and the protests, but there were no clues as to who the attackers had been.

German bullet trains had to be diverted to another route.

Metal pipes placed atop overhead power-supply lines in northern France crippled high-speed rail transport between Paris and other European cities, rail company SNCF said.

The French railway network management company RFF said the incident was very likely to be “pure vandalism.”

An RFF spokesman said there was no connection to the transportation of nuclear waste through northern France. (dpa)