Greenpeace activists hold banners and shout slogans during a protest. - AFP Photo.

PARIS: Greenpeace activists sneaked into a French nuclear power plant on Monday. In a statement Greenpeace said some members had entered the nuclear site at Nogent-sur-Seine, 95 kilometres (60 miles) southeast of Paris, to “spread the message that there is no such thing as safe nuclear power.”

Eight activists entered the power station site according to a source with the French gendarmerie, the armed police force, who added that some of the intruders had already been apprehended.

Greenpeace spokesman, Axel Renaudin said that, “A group of militants managed to climb onto the dome of one of the reactors, where they unfurled a banner saying 'Safe Nuclear Power Doesn't Exist'.”

Sophia Majnono, a Greenpeace nuclear expert said, “The aim is to show the vulnerability of French nuclear installations, and how easy it is to get to the heart of a reactor.”

She denounced a government security audit of its nuclear plants as “a communications exercise which does not take into account risks already identified in the past and does not learn the lessons of Fukushima,” the Japanese nuclear plant which was crippled by an earthquake and tsunami.

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