They said members of the crowd hurled stones, injuring two officers.

Bigger crowds were expected on Sunday for the arrival of the train, which left Valognes in western France on Saturday with 12 wagons containing the nuclear waste in fracture-proof containers.

Cogema, the French nuclear company, said the 174.7-tonne cargo, consisting of highly radioactive waste sealed into glass bricks, represented the electricity consumption for 24.7 million Germans for one year.

At the end of the nuclear fuel cycle, the re-processing plant separates the radioactive waste from spent uranium fuel rods used in nuclear power plants, enabling the recovered uranium to be re-enriched and re-used.

France insists that the high-level waste be returned to the countries that produced it. Germany has no re-processing facilities of its own.

In Germany, the government plans to store the vitrified waste at a salt mine at Gorleben, near Lueneburg.

Police said almost 15,000 officers had been mobilized to secure the passage of the train.

The anti-nuclear activists have threatened to attempt to stop the train by lying on the tracks.

The train was expected to arrive at the railhead at Dannenberg around noon (11:00 GMT) Sunday, from where the nuclear containers would be loaded onto trucks to complete the final 11 kilometers (eight miles) of the journey to Gorleben.

During a similar operation last year, an anti-nuclear demonstrators was killed as he tried to block the train at Nancy in eastern France.

Anti-nuclear and environmental campaigners say the shipments are dangerous and that the waste will contaminate the water table at Gorleben.

The environmentalist Green party, a partner in the outgoing coalition government, has supported the protest demonstrations, saying they are a call for a change of direction toward renewable energy.

Police said some 350 high-school students took part in a demonstration against the shipments at Luechow on Friday night, in which a police officer was hit in the head by a piece of metal. Organizers said two demonstrators, aged 12 and 14, were battered by police truncheons, and condemned what they said was over-reaction by the security forces.

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