Greenpeace activist parachutes into French nuclear plant

A Greenpeace activist flew over a French nuclear power plant before landing Wednesday morning in the power plant premises of Bugey, center east of France with a motorized paraglider, according to the police and Greenpeace.

"A Greenpeace campaigner arrived with a paraglider at 7:40 (5:40 GMT) in the morning. He flew over the power plant, then threw a smoke-bomb before he landed inside the plant where he was arrested," the police of the Ain department told AFP.

“We wanted to demonstrate the vulnerability of the French power plants to any aerial risk”, said Yammick Rousselet, responsible of the nuclear issues at Greenpeace.

“Only few days before the second and final round of the French presidential election, we request that this vulnerability be taken into consideration by the candidates and that their policies be aware of the huge risk of the nuclear enrichment in France, he added. “There is no such thing such as ‘safe nuclear’.”

“The purpose of this action is to send a message to the two candidates in the presidential election who are denying the risk of nuclear power,” Greenpeace spokeswoman Sophia Majnoni told AFP.

“We wanted to illustrate an external danger, like a fall of an airplane” into a nuclear plant, she said.

The EDF energy firm that runs the country’s nuclear plants said in a statement that the safety of the Bugey plant was at no time compromised by the stunt.

In December, Greenpeace activists broke into two nuclear power plants in France in an action the group said was aimed at exposing the vulnerability of the facilities.

Nine activists broke into the Nogent-sur-Seine plant near Paris and two into the Cruas plant in southern France.