Some 150 protestors positioned themselves on the railway tracks near Danneberg in northern Germany, where the shipment is meant to be loaded onto trucks on Monday, but dispersed peacefully.

The nuclear waste, which is sealed into glass bricks, is due to be dumped in a disused salt mine in nearby Gorleben but Greenpeace and other environmental groups say it is unsafe and could contaminate the water supply in the region.

The passage of the 174.7-tonne cargo from the French re-processing plant at La Hague has been punctuated by protests along the way.

On Saturday more than 3,000 activists demonstrated at Hitzacker in northern Germany ahead of the arrival of the 12-wagon train, and on Sunday about as many stood at the border to watch it cross into the country.

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

Last November, mass protests surrounding a similar shipment ended in tragedy when an environmentalist who chained himself to the railway line at Nancy in eastern France was run over and killed.

This year about 15,000 officers had been mobilised on the German side to secure the passage of the train.

According to Cogema, the French nuclear company involved, it is the eighth such nuclear waste shipment to be sent to Germany since 1996.

The shipments were interrupted in 1998 after a furore erupted when radio-active material was found on the surface of the containers. They resumed again in 2001.

The latest shipment coincides with a change in government in Berlin and has prompted considerable political debate.

Environmental organisations are concerned that the government will not keep its word and seek an alternative solution but allow the temporary storage facility at Gorleben to become a permanent dumping ground for nuclear waste.

The Greens, which were the junior partners in the outgoing coalition government, have charged that the incoming left-right coalition plans to leave the waste at Gorleben and might reverse a policy of phasing out nuclear power in Germany, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported.

The nuclear waste is produced in power plants in Germany, but sent to France because the country has no nuclear re-processing plants.

France insists that the high-level waste be returned to the countries that produced it.

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