Greenpeace stages protest at nuclear construction site
Finland’s Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority (STUK) and the police are demanding an assessment of security measures at the construction site of a new commercial nuclear reactor after Greenpeace protesters managed to enter the area.
Activists of the international environmental group were able to get into the site in the early hours of Monday. Six of the protesters were still clinging to the upper structures of a crane as late as Monday evening.
STUK and the police feel that it should not be so easy to enter the construction site. Teollisuuden Voima (TVO), which commissioned the construction of Finland’s fifth commercial reactor, the third to be located in Olkiluoto, is also responsible for security at the construction site.
“The demonstrators came by rubber boat from the sea. We want to talk about when they were spotted, and why they were able to get in”, says Mikko Paatero, Chief of Police for the Province of West Finland.
Police were on the scene within 20 minutes of being notified.
“Security measures in the area should be linked together. In principle; things like this should not be allowed to happen.”
If Greenpeace was able to penetrate the perimeter, it is also possible for those with violent objectives to do the same.
“I would like to point out that we are only talking about the construction site. It is different from a plant that is in operation”, observes Martin Landtman, the head of the project.
He emphasises that TVO knows exactly what goes on in Olkiluoto.
“If there is an intruder that does not endanger security, we will not interfere. Demonstrators are a matter for the police.”
Landtman does not want to specify situations or intruders whose entry to the area would be blocked by the guards. “We have the information about that, and it is enough.”
STUK is less than convinced that the building site is well guarded.
“There is room for improvement in security”, says Petteri Tiippana of the STUK department responsible for monitoring nuclear power plants.
“Naturally, it is possible that TVO may have had advance information that Greenpeace was coming, and they did not consider it warranted a response”, Tiippana says. However, STUK wants more information on that from TVO.
The aim of the Greenpeace action was to spur debate on the 1,500 “exceptional situations” in both equipment and in working methods that have come up during the construction so far.
STUK also feels that a public accounting needs to be made on the situation.
STUK’s Tiippana says that the problems at the construction site that were raised by Greenpeace are generally correct, as they are based on information made public by STUK.
“On the other hand, it is not true that the safety of the installation, when ready, would have been called into question at this point. Areva, the builder, and TVO, which ordered the facility, have managed to show that the degree of safety that had been previously required has been maintained through the corrections that have been made”, Tiippana says.
Landtman says that TVO has spoken publicly about all significant security problems that have come out.
“Seventy per cent of the deviations are not linked with the product itself, but rather the ways that the subcontractors operate. It is reasonable that they should speak about them themselves”, Landtman says.
“We will make sure that things are in shape before production can begin.”