A Vattenfall spokesman did not explicitly say the Sellafield leak was the reason for the group's decision. He said the decision was partly due to the fact that the group's facilities in Germany were sufficient to stock the waste that been earmarked for shipment to Sellafield this month.

Germany's Environment Minister Juergen Trittin welcomed the group's decision, saying that the Sellafield incident served to underline the dangers linked to the reprocessing of nuclear waste.

The shipment would have been the last from Germany to reprocessing plants in Britain and France as such shipments were due to end on July 1 as part of the government's plans to phase out nuclear power.

From July, only shipments of waste that had originally come from nuclear material produced in either Sellafield or at a plant in La Hague in northern France will be allowed be sent back to the plants.

The leak at the reprocessing plant at Sellafield in northwestern England went unnoticed by staff for months before it was discovered in April, by which time some 80,000 litres of highly radioactive liquid had leaked from a ruptured pipe.

The leak prompted an investigation by British Nuclear Group, which runs the plant, into other potential leaks and a campaign against "complacency" among staff.

The more than three-decade-old Sellafield plant has had a troubled history, long being the focus of environmental and anti-nuclear energy campaigners.

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