The train left a reprocessing plant in France on Friday and was due at Gorleben in north West Germany at midday on Sunday.

But as night began falling it was halted some 35 miles away from its destination by protesters.

Police used tear gas, baton charges, horses, water cannon, pepper spray and human brute force but wave after wave of protesters continued to swarm on the last stretch of track before the city of Dannenberg.

There the 135 tons of waste must be loaded on to lorries to be driven the last few miles into the storage centre.

Local hospital casualty units reported swarms of injured demonstrators, many of them elderly, who were hurt in the mêlées. No police were injured when a Molotov cocktail set fire to an armoured car.

Regular train services in the north of Germany were delayed throughout the day as the protesters had to be cleared one by one from the path of the nuclear transport.

Farmers used their tractors to blockade a road at Dannenberg in support of the demonstrators. Police said the clashes were among the fiercest they had encountered in years.

The head of Germany's Green Party, Claudia Roth, was among those last night involved in a sit-down protest on the road to Gorleben as police appealed for calm. Costs for policing for the train which left a nuclear fuel reprocessing France on Friday has already gone over the £50 million.

The protests look like being politically costly for Chancellor Angela Merkel. Her poll ratings are at historic lows, driven further down by her renewed commitment to nuclear power. She reversed an earlier decision to phase out atomic energy in Germany by 2020 saying the country needed its 20 nuclear plants more than ever before.

But Germany, the greenest country in Europe, has a majority of people opposed to the new policy.

Violence at the demonstrations will only add further woes to Mrs Merkel's fragile conservative-liberal coalition government that could topple in the spring next year if a series of key region elections go badly for her.

The train – which carries 80 heavily armed riot police riding in two carriages sandwiched between its deadly cargo – may wait until first light until moving again.

Mrs Merkel and her CDU party are worried about the images of violence: several weeks ago police overreacted at a protest in the southern city of Stuttgart against a new railway station, using tear gas and water cannon.

One man was blinded and the shocking images of what many in her own cabinet considered disproportionate force sent the party's fortunes plummeting further.