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Greenpeace Crashes Drone into French Nuclear Facility to Show Security Flaws

Greenpeace activists say they have crashed a drone into a French nuclear site, posting footage of the flight on the groups Facebook page.

The group said the stunt was to highlight the lack of security around the facility, adding that “at no time was the drone intercepted or even worried about”.

The drone, which was decked out to resemble a tiny Superman, slammed into the tower in Bugey, about 30 kilometres from Lyon, according to the video released Tuesday.

The environmental activist group says the drone was harmless but showed the lack of security in nuclear installations in France, which is heavily dependent on atomic power.

“This action has once again demonstrated the extreme vulnerability of French nuclear installations, designed for the most part in the 1970s and unprepared for external attacks,” the post read.

France generates 75 per cent of its electricity from nuclear power in 19 nuclear plants operated by state-controlled EDF.

EDF said that two drones had flown over the Bugey site, of which one had been intercepted by French police.

“The presence of these drones had no impact on the security of the installations,” EDF said, adding that it will file a police complaint.

The drone stunt follows a series of staged break-ins by Greenpeace activists into French nuclear plants, which Greenpeace says are vulnerable to outside attack, especially the spent-fuel pools.

These pools can hold the equivalent of several reactor cores, stored in concrete pools outside the highly reinforced reactor building.

Greenpeace said the spent-fuel buildings were not designed to withstand outside attacks and were the most vulnerable part of French nuclear plants.

“Spent-fuel pools must be turned into bunkers in order to make nuclear plants safer,” Greenpeace France’s chief nuclear campaigner Yannick Rousselet said.

EDF said the spent-fuel pool buildings were robust and designed to withstand natural disasters and accidents.

Greenpeace’s security breaches have sparked a parliamentary investigation into nuclear security, which is due to present its report on Thursday.

In October, Greenpeace activists broke through two security barriers and launched fireworks over EDF’s Cattenom nuclear plant.

In February, a French court gave several Greenpeace activists suspended jail sentences while ordering the group to pay a fine and $78,900 in damages to EDF.

Greenpeace is notorious for attention-grabbing stunts, which have included climbing the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro and scaling Big Ben.