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."

Comments

What if it turned out the other way?

[slapout]

And if they'd gotten shot doing this, would they be saying how mean the French are?

Re:What if it turned out the other way?

[Anonymous Coward]

If they'd gotten shot they probably wouldn't be talking at all.

Re:What if it turned out the other way?

[ArsonSmith]

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.

Re:What if it turned out the other way?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:What if it turned out the other way?

[DiniZuli]

It was in Europe - people don't have guns, and doesn't get shot during break-ins.

Re:What if it turned out the other way?

[ColdWetDog]

Gotta give Greenpeace credit for having balls.

Ever been to a Greenpeace function? Most of them don't. **

* * Well, at least on external inspection. My GF at the time would have frowned at more detailed research

Re:What if it turned out the other way?

[Luckyo]

I'd like to see how that "measurability" was established, considering that scientists can't even figure out if minor increase in radioactivity is net negative or net positive, as there are different factors at play, which represent both directions.

Oh, you're probably referring to stuff like being exposed to elements for prolonged time, having to eat dirty food, and so on. Bad news: that was earthquake and tsunami. They also killed over thirty thousand people and left hundreds of thousands homeless.

There was this really funny research on survivors of people who were putting out Chernobyl fires. Of those who survived the ordeal and a couple of months after it (when most people who got lethal dose died), there was a greater portion of them alive now then there was of general population. This was (at least partially) attributed to significant increase in health checks of the rescue crews, which allowed medics to find many problems and fix them rather then have them evolve into something incurably lethal (as is the case with many cancers).

So should we now state that Fukushima accident will likely increase life expectancy of the workers who were fixing it like it was in Chernobyl. We'll know in a couple of decades.

Re:What if it turned out the other way?

[Spykk]

I think the point was to generate press coverage. Greenpeace's greatest cause is self-promotion.

Re:What if it turned out the other way?

[JonySuede]

measurably shortened life span

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. You could counter argue that her husband, Pierre-Curie, died younger at 46. However his dead was the result of his skull crushed by the heavy wheel of an horse drawn cart, nothing to do with radiation at all...

And Fukushima is not in the same league as Chernobyl. Therefore on what do you based this affirmed mesurability ?

Re:What if it turned out the other way?

[forkfail]

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.

Re:What if it turned out the other way?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:What if it turned out the other way?

[Anonymous Coward]

On the contrary, I've never seen so many guns as during any of my trips to Europe. Particularly in airports, trainstations and around tourist spots. I think they're more paranoid than we are about the whole terrorism thing.

And I can promise you, the farm I lived on briefly in France had a few firearms on premises. If I remember correctly, the Swiss have among the highest percentage of armed citizens you'll find.

Don't let your TV spoon-feed you generalizations about very large and diverse places. They're often wrong.

Re:What if it turned out the other way?

[Tyrannosaur]

yeah accidents to measurably shorten life spans, but in day-to-day runnings there is significantly more radiation around coal-fired plants than by nuclear plants.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste

Re:What if it turned out the other way?

[camperdave]

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.

Re:What if it turned out the other way?

[Jeremi]

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.

Re:What if it turned out the other way?

[Luckyo]

It's worth noting that not only was there a major change, but there also is an issue of significantly increased checks for cancers commonly associated with irradiation (but which may or may not be caused by radiation), which in turn results in more findings of said cancers and ironically, more people that survive those cancers as they are found early enough to be able to treat them.

Real killer in the territory around Chernobyl, and across all former USSR members is alcohol, and it's also by far the biggest factor in the shortening of life-spans (observable also by remarkable difference between average age of men vs women).

Re:What if it turned out the other way?

[jpmorgan]

Suppose you did. This is a 100psi+ containment building you're talking about. What would you expect to accomplish... maybe scratch the paint?

There is no man-portable weapon that is a real threat to a nuclear facility.

Re:What if it turned out the other way?

[CAIMLAS]

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).

Re:What if it turned out the other way?

[grcumb]

I think the point was to generate press coverage. Greenpeace's greatest cause is self-promotion.

Close. Greenpeace's main tactic is publicity: Doing showy stunts that bring popular attention to issues they deem to be important.

So yeah, they want press coverage. That's their schtick.

I worked for Greenpeace in the 1980s, and let me tell you, there is a LOT to complain about with this organisation. But this action is not one of them. It's a classic hacker tactic, showing with a single action what a thousand words of dry exposition could never convey: Civilian nuclear technology in France is not adequately secured.

Everybody seems to focus on the 'Green' part of their name and ignore the 'Peace'. Greenpeace was actually founded by a bunch of folks on the West Coast of Canada who wanted to block underground nuclear tests in a tectonically unstable section of Alaska. Rather than march and Occupy and write letters and etc., they just got into a boat and sailed toward the test site. The front pages were covered with headlines to the effect of 'Who Are These Wackos', but in the process they got people to think about the dangers of nuclear testing in a geologically unsuitable location.

I have no truck whatsoever with the insanely stupid 'Save the Seals' crap that Paul Watson and co. brought into the organisation. Personally, I think their take on environmentalism is crushingly stupid, for the most part. But their campaigns for nuclear security are often smart, focused and, while they're fraught with histrionics, they generally make a valid point.

Re:What if it turned out the other way?

[kuactet]

80000 died in the bombing of Nagasaki. In the 20th century, 100000 people died simply mining coal, in the US alone and the US has a better safety record than most. It's too depressing to look up more numbers.

Re:What if it turned out the other way?

[Mathinker]

> Civilian nuclear technology in France is not adequately secured.

Besides generating bad publicity, what exactly can most attacks do to the outside of a containment vessel? From Wikipedia:

In 1988, Sandia National Laboratories conducted a test of slamming a jet fighter into a large concrete block at 481 miles per hour (775 km/h).[13][14] The airplane left only a 2.5-inch-deep (64 mm) gouge in the concrete. Although the block was not constructed like a containment building missile shield, it was not anchored, etc., the results were considered indicative. A subsequent study by EPRI, the Electric Power Research Institute, concluded that commercial airliners did not pose a danger.[15]

The Turkey Point Nuclear Generating Station was hit directly by Hurricane Andrew in 1992. Turkey Point has two fossil fuel units and two nuclear units. Over $90 million of damage was done, largely to a water tank and to a smokestack of one of the fossil-fueled units on-site, but the containment buildings were undamaged.[16][17]

Any terrorist thinking that a containment vessel is a good target, relative to lots of other available ones, is frankly an idiot.

Re:What if it turned out the other way?

[Chas]

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.

Re:What if it turned out the other way?

[AmiMoJo]

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.

Re:What if it turned out the other way?

[dj245]

Disclaimer- I work for Toshiba Power Systems (Steam turbines)

While it is true that Japan has a functioning grid now without most of their nuclear units, you can not look only at that fact. To get back to minimum capacity, they had to restart many of their old coal plants which had been partially or recently decommissioned. These plants were shut down because they were really filthy, and more expensive than nuclear- Japan imports 100% of their coal.

They restarted some of their old hydro facilities also. Mostly those were shut down because of environmental reasons also. They are lucky that they were only recently shut down and the dams were not demolished yet.

They borrowed a bunch of portable power units (generators in a container) from Taiwan, and purchased many also. These are diesel generators or gas turbines mounted in a container, producing maybe 3 to 7MW apiece. I am not sure about the details of Japan's pollution laws, but in the US, these container generators are only allowed to run in extreme emergencies, or for less than a few dozen hours a year since they have very little pollution controls.

The conservation effort is also still in progress, but maybe you didn't notice it. Our factory still has power saving measures in place, mostly relating to lighting and heating/cooling. I was there recently and working at a desk in my winter jacket might not have been "the stone age", but it was not very comfortable.

I did a quick calculation on how much energy would be saved by the earthquake victims and their companies not using electricity, but this is not that significant (around 25MW). Apologies if this is insensitive.

The country is still on the edge of a stable grid also. There is a big concern that later in the winter when it is much colder, there might be a big problem. Most Japanese apartments and houses use electric-based heating. In the summer, cutting off the AC might be a viable, if uncomfortable option, but you can't let people freeze.

Alternate Outcome: Greenpeace Activist Shot...

[Isaac-1]

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?

Re:To say nothing of their own reputation

[ackthpt]

Greenpeace has confirmed time and time again that their activists are insane. Who keeps giving these people money anyway?

People who would rather someone else get their hands dirty or risk their lives, while they go on enjoying a cup of tea and good book of poetry.

Interesting game, isn't it? Not entirely unlike the other side of the coin - Corporations and lawyers.

BFD, they jumped a fence

[subreality]

Let me know when they actually get inside the building. Then I might care a bit.

Re:It's funny how stupid they are

[MobyDisk]

Sounds like they didn't protest against nuclear energy. They protested against lax security. This is one of the best white-hat real-world sneaks I've every heard of in my life. What a way to make their point!

A very clever plan.

[Kaenneth]

That involved being on the other side of this airtight hatch.

How long would it take to actually penetrate the containment building?

From Wikipedia:

The containment building itself is typically an airtight steel structure enclosing the reactor normally sealed off from the outside atmosphere. The steel is either free-standing or attached to the concrete missile shield. In the United States, the design and thickness of the containment and the missile shield are governed by federal regulations (10 CFR 50.55a), and must be strong enough to withstand the impact of a fully loaded passenger airliner without rupture.

Re:To say nothing of their own reputation

[hawguy]

Greenpeace has confirmed time and time again that their activists are insane. Who keeps giving these people money anyway?

I'm not sure that this act proves that they are insane - sounds like they proved that a very real security hole exists. (note that I don't agree with Greenpeace's message against Nuclear - I think Nuclear can be a safe, clean alternative to many other power generation methods)

They were stopped before they could penetrate several other nuclear plants, but they shouldn't have been able to penetrate any of them long enough to hang a banner.

I think the real question is - why did Greenpeace do this intrusion detection test rather than a nuclear regulatory body? if a group of crazy activists could penetrate the plants, then anyone could.

Re:It's funny how stupid they are

[Anonymous Coward]

Less polluting than WHAT exactly? Actually it's the MOST polluting, as well as most expensive way of boiling water that we know of. You need to read up on radioactivity.

And how exactly is it the most polluting? CO2? Radioactivity? Coal has nuke fission plants trumped on both of those.
Oh wait, coal plants put out more radiation in one day than a nuke plant would be allowed to put out in one year. Also a nuke reactor kicks out ZERO in the terms of green house gasses.

I'd also like to point out that radiation is not the instant killer a fireball from an exploding gas* tank is!
*Gas or petrol, take your pick.

Didn't actually break in

[Hentes]

The only thing these activists managed to get through was the fence, they then hung their banners on the outside of the containment building. No risk to security.

Re:Good thing nobody hates the French

[Ynot_82]

Funnily enough, the whole tongue-in-cheek thing was started by a frenchman
I forget the exact details, but he was sarcastically complimenting an englishman on his "invention", that the french had actually done years before
pressing your tongue lightly against your cheek prevented you from accidentally smiling after making a sarcastic comment

Bullshit, just total bullshit.

[RobinEggs]

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.

Re:It's funny how stupid they are

[CrimsonAvenger]

Article I read about the event mentioned that Greenpeace called the French authorities and said that their guys were doing this, so the French troops who were about to gun down the "white hats" came within a couple of minutes of reading about this in the obituaries.

Telling the French "oh, yeah, those are our guys, please don't shoot them" doesn't strike me as making nearly as much of a point as Greenpeace would like to think they made.

Re:To say nothing of their own reputation

[CrimsonAvenger]

sounds like they proved that a very real security hole exists

Sounds like the came very close to proving that no such hole existed - when you call ahead to tell the police not to shoot your guys, you're not proving much.

And from what I've read so far, the only reason they managed to deploy their banner is that the French snipers were ordered not to take the shots after Greenpeace called and said that they had sent those guys....

Re:It's funny how stupid they are

[ColdWetDog]

Greenpeace will never be satisfied until the all energy resources are eliminated.

That would shut them up. But Greenpeace does occasionally make valid points. If a bunch of leftist yahoo girls can breach reactor security, then somebody is doing something very, very wrong.

Yes, nuclear power can be done safely and maybe even economically. No, it doesn't look like anybody but the US Navy is actually doing it right.

That is the big problem with nuclear power. It COULD be done safely. It hasn't been and likely won't be because it's expensive.

Re:Great comments!

[CrimsonAvenger]

That's the whole point. Security was so lax nothing like that happened.

Umm, no. Greenpeace called the French authorities and told them that they'd sent men sneaking into nuclear power plants, and the French authorities then stood down their snipers and allowed the Greenpeace guys to finish climbing the building and deploy their banner before arresting them.

So, the phone call saved the lives of the Greenpeace protesters, which hardly shows that security of the plants was lax....

I'd like to enjoy my tea and poetry....

[Radical Moderate]

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.

Re:To say nothing of their own reputation

[Anonymous Coward]

I disagree. It just means the security hole is that they didn't simply stick to the reply of "call your men off. We WILL shoot them.

Re:Alternate Outcome: Greenpeace Activist Shot...

[PRMan]

I was expecting, "French army surrenders to Greenpeace..."

Re:It's funny how stupid they are

[mortonda]

Got a link to that source? All of the stories I see fail to say anything about that.

Re:So show me the clean energy research and develo

[ReinoutS]

So maybe for once they could take all this money from donations and build say a windfarm and sell clean electric energy to people?

Guess what Greenpeace Germany is doing!

Re:Good thing nobody hates the French

[ackthpt]

Funnily enough, the whole tongue-in-cheek thing was started by a frenchman
I forget the exact details, but he was sarcastically complimenting an englishman on his "invention", that the french had actually done years before
pressing your tongue lightly against your cheek prevented you from accidentally smiling after making a sarcastic comment

Sabotage is also a French word - throwing shoes into the machinery.

Re:To say nothing of their own reputation

[DavidTC]

What I find astonishing about Fukushima is learning that we've decided to keep nuclear waste in a manner that is not failsafe. That we need to actively cool.

That is possibly the most idiotic thing I've ever heard. It's not like it's an infinite amount of heat.

Spread it out, pour some iron on it, and put in some giant heat sinks or something.

Christ, it's like everyone is an idiot or something. 'Hey, this generates a set amount of heat per second, forever, and if it ever gets above a certain temperature it will melt through things.'. 'Herp derp, let's pump water past it. There's no way that could go wrong.' 'Maybe we could rig it where it just distributes the heat to the air or the ground or something, which would only fail if the sun started consuming the earth and heated the atmosphere up massively?' 'Nope, takes too much space. Water pump, that's the plan!'

I understand reactors having problems when shut down, but the waste? Seriously?

Slashdot...

[toutankh]

..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.