PARIS: Two Greenpeace activists broke onto the stage at the start of a global nuclear summit in France on Tuesday, interrupting President Emmanuel Macron and UN nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi as they were greeting heads of state.

The protesters, dressed sharply in black suits and ties, held banners bearing the Greenpeace logo and reading “Nuclear Power = Energy Insecurity” and “Nuclear power fuels Russia’s war”.

One of them shouted at Macron, “Why are we still buying uranium from Russia?” to which the president replied, “We produce nuclear power ourselves.” France has its own uranium enrichment capacity, but also imports enriched uranium for its power plants, including from Russia, according to the latest customs data published by the French government.

Russia’s state nuclear company Rosatom accounted for about 44pc of the global uranium enrichment capacity in 2025, according to the World Nuclear Association, and European nuclear power producers have struggled to wean themselves off these supplies four years after Russia invaded Ukraine.

Around 15 Greenpeace activists blocked arriving convoys outside the venue in Boulogne-Billancourt on the outskirts of Paris on Tuesday, the environmental campaigning group said in a statement.

France is hosting the second world nuclear energy summit on Tuesday, where world leaders will meet to discuss and promote nuclear power. “For Greenpeace France, the holding of such a summit is an anachronism, an event completely out of touch with reality and with the lessons to be learned from the tragic situations of the Russian aggression in Ukraine, the strikes on Iran, and the impacts of the worsening climate disruption,” the group said.

Published in Dawn, March 11th, 2026