A project to build a facility to store highly radioactive nuclear waste in the French countryside drew a protest by hundreds of people on Saturday, with police firing tear gas to break up rowdy demonstrators.

The project, known as CIGEO, is meant to build an underground storage centre outside the northeastern village of Bure to bury the most dangerous waste from nuclear power plants and hold it for hundreds of thousands of years.

Organisers said 2,000 people had taken to the street in Bure to protest the plan by the National Agency for Radioactive Waste Management (ANDRA) -- though authorities put the number of demonstrators at around 700.

"Get out, ANDRA!" protesters chanted under heavy police presence, marching behind a banner that read "Protest for the Future".

Town officials said a

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