Greenpeace activists strive to prove a point about security flaws at french nuclear plant

Early Monday morning, Greenpeace activists broke into the Tricastin nuclear power plant in France to expose flaws in in the plant’s security.

Protestors also broke into other nuclear power plants across France.

"With this action, Greenpeace is asking Francois Hollande to close the Tricastin plant, which is among the five most dangerous in France," Greenpeace representative Yannick Rousselet told Reuters. "People with bad intentions could have posed a threat to the reactor's safety."

Greenpeace is concerned about the security of France’s nuclear power plants. The environmental activists claim that a recent government safety review has focused too much on how natural disasters would affect the plants. They also claim that the review completely overlooked human-caused risks. The review began soon after the nuclear meltdown in Japan.

"With this nonviolent action, Greenpeace has shown how vulnerable French nuclear plants are," Sophia Majnoni d'Intignano, a Greenpeace activist told Al Jazeera .

French officials from nuclear safety agency ASN say that the protests did not affect plant security.

Image: By jean-louis Zimmermann (Flickr: site nucléaire du Tricastin (FR26,FR84)) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons