Protesters blocked a train carrying nuclear waste back to Germany on Friday, chaining themselves to train tracks a few hundred yards from the railway station in Caen, in northwestern France. The train, with 11 carriages of treated nuclear waste and 3 carriages full of riot police officers, was headed to Gorleben, Germany. The waste, which was created in German nuclear power plants and treated in France by Areva, was returning for storage in Gorleben, in Lower Saxony. The protesters called the shipment “the most radioactive ever,” an accusation contested by Areva, which had melted the waste, mixed it in glass and put it into containers. The German Parliament approved a bill recently extending the life of the country’s 17 reactors by 12 years, although they were supposed to have been shut down in 2020.