Nuclear waste train halted at Franco-German border

PARIS Nov 24 (Reuters) - A French train transporting 150 tonnes of radioactive waste was at a standstill near the German border for a planned halt on Thursday, waiting to resume its journey to a storage site in Germany, the French interior ministry said.

The train had left Areva's nuclear fuel reprocessing facility in Normandy on Wednesday after a scuffle between police in riot gear and several hundred protesters who tried to occupy the train tracks near the town of Valognes.

"It could take two hours or two days until the train resumes its journey," a French interior ministry spokesman said. "Whatever the time it takes, the important thing is that public order is guaranteed both on the French and German sides."

"Demonstrations in Valognes were violent so we are taking all the necessary precaution to ensure the convoy resumes its journey in optimum conditions."

The spokesman added that the train, currently stationed in Remilly, some 70 km (40 miles) from the German border, was in a position from which two possible routes could be taken into Germany.

Anti-nuclear activists "Sortir du Nucleaire" said on their website that indications from their members on the ground were that the train would resume its journey on Friday morning via three possible routes: Forbach, Lauterbourg or Kehl.

A spokesman at Areva, the French nuclear group that has reprocessed the German nuclear waste, had earlier said the train's halt was "planned".

In Remilly on Wednesday, anti-nuclear activists had played a cat-and-mouse game with police officers, who fired tear gas to disperse them before charging the crowd with batons.

Protesters managed to damage some sections of the railway track, but workers repaired it before the train left.

The train carried 11 tubular containers of highly radioactive nuclear waste that are due to be stored in Gorleben in northeast Germany.

The train was the last of 12 shipments of treated German nuclear waste sent in recent years from France to Gorleben.

An expired contract between Areva and German nuclear power producers is not expected to be renewed as Germany has voted against the transportation of radioactive nuclear fuel.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel decided to shut down eight of Germany's nuclear power plants in the wake of March's disaster at the Fukushima plant in Japan, and later said all its remaining nuclear capacity would be taken off the grid by 2022.