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Greenpeace Breaks Into French Nuclear Plant
dotancohen writes "Greenpeace activists secretly entered a French nuclear site before dawn and draped a banner reading 'Hey' and 'Easy' on its reactor containment building, to expose the vulnerability of atomic sites in the country. Greenpeace said the break-in aimed to show that an ongoing review of safety measures, ordered by French authorities after a tsunami ravaged Japan's Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant earlier this year, was focused too narrowly on possible natural disasters, and not human factors."
Nuclear power is one of the less polluting ways to get energy out there. Yet they protest against it. Guess they would be more happy with coal plants. (I have no real life idea about the situation, but this is what I learned from SimCity)
Greenpeace has confirmed time and time again that their activists are insane. Who keeps giving these people money anyway?
If they were shot, they would be more proof how dangerous nuclear power plants are. The accident would double the victims of nuclear power in the recent decade!
I have to wonder what sort of spin they would put on it if the alternate heasline outcome happend: Greenpeace Activist Shot While breaking into Nuclear Power Plant?
Greenpeace said the break-in aimed to show that an ongoing review of safety measures ... was focused too narrowly on possible natural disasters, and not human factors.
Reasonable and responsible activists would have hired safety and security experts to write a report, lobbied a politician to present it, and run a media campaign to raise awareness. But hey, they made their point: there are dangerous radical groups in France that will break into nuclear power plants. They even pointed out one in particular, called Greenpeace.
Let me know when they actually get inside the building. Then I might care a bit.
I only hope these people live long enough to see the consequences of the abandonment of nuclear power. Seriously, why don't they pull this shit in coal stations?
"People don't want to learn linux" hasn't been a valid excuse since '03.
... how a single comment has yet to say the obvious.
No matter if you are pro or anti nuclear GP has just proven that obviously security measures need to be beefed up. There is absolutely no reason that a hostile, unOKed, group of people should be able to break into a nuclear power plant and have enough time to hang up a big sign in the middle of the factory and then escape.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Depends on how you look at things.
If you count measurably shortened life span, though, the folks around Fukushima might argue with you about impact.
Check your premises.
Of course, but the folks who would do that would do it anyway and likely are as we type.
The fact the Greenpeace team weren't sniped instantly shows France and any other country which doesn't post armed kill teams onsite isn't concerned with stopping terrorists. Cameras are nice but manned posts are necessary for instant response.
Gotta give Greenpeace credit for having balls.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Have they tried breaking into coal or hydro plants? Because they can cause huge damage by breaking into those ones as well.
Oh well, hope they shut down all the nuclear plants around the world and go back to oil, coal, gas and hydro, see how well that works out for the environment.
BTW., do you realize that the natural outcome of this 'greenpeace' movement agenda would be further destruction of economy and society? Aren't they acting like people we love to call 'terrorists' here?
You can't handle the truth.
..."Homer Simpson"? Because it sounds like their plants are run about as well as the one on The Simpsons.
Not Homer, for this one, but Monty Burns - his lack of vision and expenditure on proper staffing levels, properly trained staff and adequate security are secondary to his accumulation of wealth
"What?!? Smithers did a gaggle of unwashed hippies just enter our plant and hang a banner without my approval? Not ehhxcellent.
But I'm not sure that really fits the French in this case. More like blind optimism they have everything under control and nothing could ever go wrong.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
What amazes me is that it wasn't the outcome. Here in Mexico in far less sensitive power installations but still related to national security the detachment in charge will fill the body of pranksters with lead, and that was before the security situation became as bad it is now. So if the French are not able to secure nuclear sites, then at least they should drop the security theater in airports, since is clear that they don't care about security.
Mexico: 100% conservative's America now!
So show me the clean energy research and development that Green Peace does.
If they care about the planet so much maybe they should invest some money, hire some scientists, develop new technologies and fix something for a change instead of protesting pointlessly.
So maybe for once they could take all this money from donations and build say a windfarm and sell clean electric energy to people?
But wait, I bet they are protesting those as well.
but the expanded life span due to having heat on demand and the ability to light you home at night with something other than smoky fires counters that as well.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
I think that's kind of the point: to get them to secure the place.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
I can't even imagine a more disingenuous stunt.
Greenpeace are extensively established as absolutely against almost all uses of nuclear power. They don't give a flying fuck about "increasing security" or pointing out possible threats; they want those plants shutdown entirely, and yesterday.
Putting on a white hat doesn't make you a White Hat; they're only dressing up their usual tactics in the guise of a benevolent hack. This is just a publicity stunt in their campaign to destroy nuclear power.
If we're going to start counting 'measurably shortened lifespan' (if you have links to sources that prove this is the case then please, by all means), then the numbers for coal and oil would also climb, probably by a lot more. Working around burning coal or mining it (black lung will put you down a few years early) and near oil refineries is not kind to the human body. Solar and Wind will (of course) be better in this regards, but this doesn't solve the underlying issue of scale.
It was in Europe - people don't have guns, and doesn't get shot during break-ins.
The French government has no need to underscore how mean they can be to Greenpeace Ever been in the Paris Metro and see the soldiers with the rifles, just waiting for someone to start some trouble? You'll now see them inside the N-plants. Well played GP.
Ripley: Lieutenant, what do those pulse-rifles fire?
Gorman: 10 millimeter explosive tip caseless. Standard light armor-piercing rounds. Why?
Ripley: Well, look where your team is. They're right under the primary heat exchangers.
Gorman: So?
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
So show me the clean energy research and development that Green Peace does.
Clean energy would be unnecessary, because as far as I've been able to figure, Greenpeace wants the human race to simply all die. No energy required after that.
I think the point was to generate press coverage. Greenpeace's greatest cause is self-promotion.
Not claiming that coal doesn't kill through pollution, too. Claiming that nuclear never kills, including by accidental emission and mishandling of waste, however, is naive and deceptive.
Probably would have been better had I used Chernobyl as opposed to Fukushima for my example; those statistics are in and readily available.
Check your premises.
The French government said they recognized it was some activists and did nothing
So if I want to plant a bomb on a nuclear reactor I just have to dress like a hippy and hand out pamphlets on my way into the plant?
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
If Fukushima ends up having a cancer impact outside the error bars on normal cancer, as a health physicist, I will be shocked. Even Chernobyl was murky healthwise (besides the few children killed by iodine, and we watch closely for that now that we know its a risk), and leading opponents of nuclear have already started warning people that not seeing an impact doesn't mean there wasn't one. Which is true, hence our use of highly conservative models for these incidents. But to imply widespread cancer increases due to Fukushima is to be disingenuous at best and a liar at worst. I mean for Gods sake, even among the survivors of the atomic bombs the cancer incidence rate was such a small blip it is widely considered to be statistically useless.
in a world where nuclear power plants don't have half-assed security. Call me crazy.
To be effective, regulators must have an adversarial relationship with those they regulate. When that's gone, you get Deepwater Horizon, or Fukishima. I agree Greenpeace shouldn't be doing this kind of thing, but unfortunately they're all we've got since federal regulators crawled into industry's bed. I don't know if the same is true in France, but I'd be surprised it it wasn't.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
Nobody is saying that. What people are saying is that since its advent, fewer people have died from nuclear power than coal, even if you count Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Not able =! Don't want to go the way of frontiersman "step on my lawn and I'll kill you" America.
You can go two ways about security. First is to just wall everything important up, and leave the rest to fend for themselves (in turn creating more of those who will storm your walls, requiring more walls..). That is the path that USA and many third world countries choose, because it's the fairly cheap way of doing it, especially when you only care about a few percent of wealthy who can afford the walls and guards.
Other way is to control what happens before people who actually do mean harm ever get to the plant. That is the way used in Europe in general. Society lives in a more happy and to extent more controlled way of life, and as a result people who want to be terrorists stand out badly and get nailed before the act. That's why Breivik et al are rare exceptions to the rule, and why we have a whole lot less crime while having a whole lot less prisoners at the same time. Just recently after Breivik we had a big wave of even more scrutiny over "what comes in" in Europe, with arrests of people ordering "strangely big portions of fertiliser". And as investigation has showed, Breivik had a ridiculous amount of luck on his side, coming close to being found out several times during his preparations, because he really stood out with his bomb making antics even in very sparsely populated rural Norway and being very smart and cautious.
Now imagine someone trying to do the same in much more populated rural France. Security forces will have your ass before you get your bomb half done because you'll stand out. That is if european ETA-like terrorists will have not get you first for indiscriminate targeting that would harm their currently widespread agenda of "kill only certain politicians, cause maximum property damage and avoid damage to civilians at all costs".
Finally, there's a really funny question of "what exactly will you bomb at a nuclear plant"? Reactor? It's solid steel - there are no welding seams. You'll need a shitload of explosives, and some way of actually strapping them onto the reactor vessel to do the damage to it, not to mention that blowing it up... will terminate criticality so all you get is localized spread of fissile material from reactor as far as your bomb can carry it which will usually mean inside the reactor building meaning just to get fissile materials out, you'll have to raze that too. Better bring many truckloads of high explosives. Cooling systems? Reactor will just be scrambled with boric acid and all the damage you do will be limited to having to get a new reactor vessel. This is one of the parts that many anti-nuclear "but TERRORISTS" people like to ignore - nuclear power plant is just not an attractive target for indiscriminate bombing - especially since there are far, FAR easier targets to bomb if you want to cause massive mayhem, such as large population centers.
You are wrong about the certitude of the shortened life expectancy. Marie-Curie who worked without any protection with Radium, Polonium and Uranium, died at 66. She was 1 years older than the US female average life expectancy at that time.
Okay, the first problem is that you are trying to make an argument based on an anecdote. A single case does not a trend make, one way or the other. But even if we ignore that, you're still doing it wrong: to do it right, you'd have to compare Marie Curie's actual lifespan against the lifespan Marie Curie would have attained had she not suffered from radiation poisoning. Comparing her lifespan against the average woman's lifespan is meaningless because Mme Curie was not the average woman -- no woman is. You might as well argue that getting a piano dropped on your head is harmless as long as you are 65 or older when it happens.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
..where people think that exposing software security flaws in order to fix them is good, but complain about the "ugly hippies" who expose a security flaw in a nuclear power plant.
Versus what, the residents of West Virginia, China, or anywhere else where coal is the predominant source of electricity?
People are stupid. "Nuclear power is dangerous, look at Fukishima". The following month, a nuclear power plant (IIRC of the same vintage) in Omaha, Nebraska was flooded. No permanent harm came of the flooding. Why was that not "big news"?
The problem is that the Japanese put too much stock in their government, and their nuclear reactors were both out of date and ill maintained. This tragedy has been used politically well beyond the scope of the problem. The problem wasn't nuclear power, it was incompetence and negligence.
People talk about there being a "good, green alternative". I've got news for you: there are nuclear reactor designs which can take weapons grade whatever and turn it into relatively inert materials, all while being designed in a fashion which does not allow for a meltdown to occur using passive safety methods and different approaches in the reactors. China is doing this. France, to a limited degree, is doing this.
There's also talk about nuke power being expensive. Why is it expensive? The impoverished (relatively) Chinese seem to think it's an economically feasible situation, even though they've got more than enough coal and hydroelectric to power things completely if they wanted to. Is it more expensive than the loss of health, longevity, environment, and mental accuity that other power methods produce? Not really.
The real truth here is that Greenpeace is a group of crazed radicals. They burn industrial complexes in the name of saving the environment, kill animals off in the name of preserving them (particularly through subsidiaries like PETA), and protest the only clear, viable power source we have for the future (the US has hundreds of years of nuclear power in nuclear waste alone).
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Give it time. Nuclear hasn't been around as long as coal, and with nuclear the plants themselves become more dangerous to operate as they age.
Christ on a crutch. This is why people are advocating for newer, cleaner, safer designs! Instead of continuing to rely stuff built in the 70's with technology firmly rooted in the 50's, why not build new plants based off cleaner, safer designs that have emerged in the last decade or two?
The problem is all the NIMBYs and BANANAs and people who've been hyper-conditioned to think "Nuclear = bomb in my yard".
And such stockpiles of waste wouldn't accumulate as fast or in as vast a quantity if we use newer designs and actually recycled the damn fuel! Yet another thing the "Nuclear = China Meltdown System On My Children" hyperbole-spewers have prevented us from undertaking.
Yes, the final end-product is quite dangerous. But it's quite compact and can be stored away from the populace quite easily. Or would if, yet again, the "Nuclear = THE DEVIL!" crowd would stop blowing holes in comprehensive planning and then bitching because the plan is now no longer comprehensive.
Personally, I'd rather have a man-made cavern in a geologically safe area be dangerous as hell for the next 10,000 years than have to breathe that crap in every day of my lives from coal-fired plants. Or risk dying in a cave-in. Or having the state I live in become a vassal-entity to another state simply because all the "renewable" power schemes don't work here due to climate conditions.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Nuclear apologists seem to be fixated on this comparison with coal, but as the GP said it is highly misleading and a straw man. Greenpeace, or the mainstream green movement for that matter, are not arguing for more coal. They are arguing for clean and reliable energy.
Look at Japan, a nation heavily dependent on nuclear power because it has few natural resources. 80% of their reactors are still offline but the country has not reverted to the stone age. I was there in the immediate aftermath and people had to cut down energy usage, but the country coped. Now they have lifted most of the restrictions, so it just goes to show that even when forced to drop most nuclear power with no warning or preparation it won't completely cripple a country.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Well, some 25-40% of English words are of French origin, so this thread could easily become the longest ever on /.