German police forcibly removed anti-nuclear protesters who had staged a sit-in outside a nuclear waste storage facility where 11 containers of reprocessed nuclear waste are to be stored.

More than 1,000 people were sitting on the road outside of the facility near the small town of Gorleben on Monday, police said. Some of the thousands of police officers deployed in the area picked up the protesters one by one and dragged them away.

The protesters were among the last of more than 15,000 who staged mass demonstrations over the weekend in an attempt to prevent the containers from reaching their destination.

Spent fuel from German nuclear power plants is sent each year to France and returned reprocessed to be stored at the site. Gorleben, about 95 miles (155 kilometers) northeast of Hannover, is a traditional focus of anti-nuclear protests.

This year’s protesters succeeded in delaying the transport by more than 14 hours, but the containers are expected to reach the site in Gorleben later Monday.