Sources say that some 50,000 people have taken part in anti-nuclear waste storage protests this weekend in the Wendland region (northeastern lower Saxony) of Germany.

Eleven CASTOR’s (Cask for storage and transport of radioactive material), in total containing 123 tonnes of radioactive waste material were being transported from the French town of Volagnes to Goerleben in Germany.  The Transport of the 11 Castors was organized by state controlled French Nuclear Engineering company, Areva.

Castors being transported through France and Germany.

The Nuclear waste originally came from the worlds largest nuclear recycling plant, La Hague, where Areva reprocesses nuclear waste by extracting uranium and plutonium to create MOX (mixed oxide) fuel which is an alternative to low enriched uranium, used in light water nuclear reactors.

The largest part of the protest took place in Dannenberg in a large field near to where the waste was being unloaded from the trains and placed onto trucks in order to complete the final stretch or its journey.

According to the Chairman of the German Police trade union, 20,000 officers were deployed with tear gas and water cannon.

The protests were the biggest of their kind and caused the transportation process to be approx. 10 hours behind schedule.