• Greenpeace 'bombs' French nuclear reactor -- could it happen in US?

    By Miguel Llanos, NBC News

    A paragliding Greenpeace activist who dropped a smoke bomb over a French nuclear reactor on Wednesday added a new element to the presidential race there -- and raised the question of whether the same, or worse, could happen at a U.S. nuclear reactor.


    "At no moment was the safety of the installations at risk," said the plant's operator, French utility giant EDF, adding that the pilot was arrested by security staff at the Bugey nuclear plant in southeast France.

    EDF acknowledged that a second activist was arrested at another nuclear site in southwest France after entering via a truck gate and hiding for an hour in brush within the "surveillance zone," Reuters reported.

    Greenpeace said it was raising awareness of nuclear power issues ahead of France's presidential elections on Sunday.

    It "illustrates the vulnerability of French nuclear to the threat of air attack," Greenpeace France spokeswoman Sophia Majnoni d'Intignano said in a statement. "While Germany took into account the aircraft crash in its safety testing, France still refuses to analyze this risk for our plants."

    France, which gets 80 percent of its electricity from nuclear power, pledged special safety tests at its 58 reactors after Japan's Fukushima nuclear disaster in March 2011.

    Those tests include standing up to floods, earthquakes, power outages and cooling system failures -- but not terrorist attacks or even a plane crash.

    So could a paraglider attack happen in the U.S. -- or would it be shot down before even getting to a nuclear site?

    "Completely speculative," Steve Kerekes, a spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, told msnbc.com. "Our facilities are extremely well-defended. Let's leave it at that."

    Over at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a group that says it's neither for nor against nuclear power, two nuclear experts said that while a reactor's containment dome would be hard to penetrate other targets are available.

    The intake structure, where water is brought in to cool the reactor fuel, "is an easier target," Dave Lochbaum told msnbc.com. Without coolant, that fuel could cause a meltdown.

    The aerial threat exists, added Edwin Lyman, because the Nuclear Regulatory Commission "decided in 2007 to exclude any kind of aerial attack from the 'design basis threat' -- that is, the set of attacks that reactor operators must provide protection to defend against.

    "So the NRC doesn't require that nuclear plants have means to detect or defend against intrusions from the air," he added. "And the federal government also does not require 'no fly zones' around nuclear plants that could be enforced by the military."

    Kerekes countered by noting that an independent study in 2002 found that U.S. nuclear containment structures can withstand even a crash from a commercial airliner.

    As for paragliders, Lochbaum said a more likely scenario is where one or more are used at night in an attempt to get into a nuclear plant.

    "While nuclear plant security perimeter fences are well lit, the lighting is to allow security officers to catch anyone trying to climb over, cut through, or tunnel under the fences," he said. "The lights and the camera angles might not readily show someone flying in. That someone could be carrying sufficient weapons to cause problems."

    At that point, Lochbaum said, "it becomes a race -- can the intruder access area(s) needed to sabotage the plant before the security officers intervene?"

    Japan wants Fukushima residents to bury radiated soil in their own backyards, but how dangerous is the dirt and where should it go? NBC News Chief Foreign Correspondent Richard Engel reports.

    Nuclear plants already test such scenarios, and Lochbaum said "the good guys sometimes lose the race" in testing -- even with the six weeks notice given by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

    "Typically, the force-on-force tests are conducted once every three years at each U.S. nuclear plant," he said. "A test may consist of four exercises -- different entry points and different targets. It would be useful to periodically throw in a glider or parachute entry to make sure the security officers practice handling such threats, too."

    Nuclear power debate in France includes Libya project

    Back in France, the stunt certainly got attention -- but not all of it flattering for Greenpeace.

    "The main consequence of this stupid action will be to prevent any air recreation within more areas of France," posted one person on Greenpeace's main blog on the stunt.

    An anonymous post on another Greenpeace blog criticized the stunt, saying a paraglider couldn't carry enough explosives to damage nuclear containment areas. 

    "You've also missed the point," the writer added, "that someone could cause far graver damage by carrying out a similar attack on the Olympic Stadium in London later in the year."

    Reuters contributed to this report.

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  • German couple make greenbacks in anti-nuke battle

    By Andy Eckardt, NBC News Producer

    MAINZ, Germany – In a major victory for the anti-nuclear movement, Germany announced Monday that it will phase-out nuclear power over the next 11 years. The plan is for the country’s 17 atomic power plants to be shut down by 2022.

    Germany Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision was made in response to public outcry over Japan’s Fukushima disaster, which reinvigorated the country’s somewhat dormant anti-nuclear movement and gave Germany’s environmentalist ‘Green’ party a boost.

    But Germany’s alternative energy movement is nothing new. Just ask the Sladeks.

    After the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, when people in central Europe were increasingly worried about toxic fallout, Ursula Sladek and her husband Michael decided it was time to act.

    Taking charge
    “Radioactive residues from Chernobyl were found on the playgrounds and farmland of our community. We were not certain anymore, if the milk, the vegetables and other farm products were safe to eat for our children,” Michael Sladek told NBC News.

    The Sladeks have five children and live in Schönau, a small town in Germany’s picturesque Black Forrest region.

    They knew they had to look at the broader picture and started questioning the use of nuclear energy. Chernobyl became a wake-up call for them and, eventually, for their entire community.

    At first, the Sladeks took a very “domestic” approach and searched for ways to preserve energy at home, while gradually looking into access to green energy resources and “green models” in the region.

    “We were naïve to believe that after Chernobyl politicians would wake up and put an end to nuclear energy. But, when we saw that nothing was happening, we knew we had to roll up our sleeves and do something ourselves,” Ursula Sladek said in an interview with German broadcaster ZDF.

    Pete Souza / The White House

    President Barack Obama meets with Goldman Environmental Prize winners in the Oval Office, April 13, 2011. Ursula Sladek is in the center on crutches.

    “While we were campaigning for local support and running competitions to generate environmental awareness among the residents of Schönau, we soon realized that we had to take the fight off the streets and to take new projects into our own hands,” Michael Sladek added. 
     
    The result: In a 1996 town referendum – after 10 years of intensive research, protests and battles with local authorities – the residents of Schönau voted to take over the local power grid, supplied by renewable energy only.

    Environmental hero
    Today, Ursula Sladek, runs EWS, a local utility company which is collectively owned by 1,000 citizens and which provides more than 400 million kilowatt hours of power to more than 100,000 households and businesses across Germany.

    Needless to say that Ursula, a former primary school teacher, and Michael, a doctor, have become environmental heroes in their region, and beyond.

    In April, Ursula Sladek was awarded the 2011 Goldman Environmental Prize for Excellence in Protecting the Environment. The prize, awarded by a San Francisco-based organization, recognizes six grassroots environmentalists across the globe annually and awards them $150,000 “to pursue their vision of a renewed and protected environment.”

    For Ursula, the highlight of her recognition in the United States was an invitation to the Oval Office to meet with President Barack Obama. She presented him with the first English copy of her book, “100 good reasons against nuclear power.”

    “Sladek has addressed climate change and energy security from the grassroots level, illustrating how social entrepreneurship and environmental stewardship can come together to tackle two of the world’s most urgent challenges,” the official Goldman Environmental Prize citation reads.

    “Several American businessmen approached me during our visit to the award ceremony in San Francisco, and while they all admired our plight, their first question always was: ‘Can you make profit with this?’” Michael Sladek said

    “And my answer always was: ‘Yes, we can,’” he said.

    More than just green
    Since its beginning, the company has been profitable, according to Michael Sladek, and grown annually, with total sales reaching approximately $95 million in 2009.

    From the overall profit, company shareholders receive dividends; also, some of the money is reinvested in new projects or is used to support other local communities who want to run green energy companies that are independent from the large leading utility firms.

    “We truly believe in the success and the future of decentralized renewable power facilities,” Michael Sladek said. 

    Experts, including the Sladeks, say that German politicians will now need to find the perfect mix of off- and on-shore windparks, solar farms, hydropower plants and other sustainable energy sources in order to meet its ambitious goal of closing all nuclear plants by 2022.

    “Next week, we will have a delegation of officials and regular citizens from Japan visiting. They want to pick up some ideas for the future,” said Michael Sladek.