[Al Ahram] Police on Monday incarceratedDrop the gat, Rocky, or you're a dead 'un!
29 Greenpeace activists who snuck into a nuclear plant in southern La Belle France, in the latest break-in by the environmental group aimed at highlighting alleged security weaknesses at atomic facilities.
The activists managed to enter the grounds of the Tricastin plant, around 200 kilometres (120 miles) north of Marseille, around dawn, Greenpeace and police said.
They hung yellow banners reading "Tricastin: a nuclear accident" and "Francois Hollande
...the Socialist president of La Belle France, an economic bad joke for la Belle France but seemingly a foreign policy realist...
: president of a catastrophe?" in reference to the French president, according to Isabelle Philippe, a spokeswoman for the environmental group.
Before entering the facility, the activists also projected images inside the plant, including one showing a crack running along part of the structure.
"Greenpeace wants to point out all the security weaknesses in the production of nuclear energy," she said. "Tricastin is one of the most dangerous plants and one of five that should be closed quickly."
"It was the easiest thing in the world for the activists to enter the plant, it took them 20 minutes to get from the entrance to the top of the structures," she said.
The interior ministry said all the activists tossed in the calaboose
Maw! They're comin' to get me, Maw!
'>were tossed into the calaboose in a full sweep of the facility. It had taken several hours to arrest them all, after some had chained themselves to structures inside the plant.
Among those arrested were French, Italian, Romanian and Spanish nationals.
The government said in a statement that it was considering "stiffer penalties" for such actions.
The activists "were not able to access the plant's sensitive areas," like command rooms, interior ministry front man Pierre-Henry Brandet said.
"It's a media stunt that poses no security danger," he said.
He insisted that the environmentalists, who divided into three groups upon entering the plant, "were immediately detected".