As many as 30 Greenpeace activists broke into a Swedish nuclear plant
Monday, demanding that parliament this week vote against allowing new nuclear
facilities to be built, the group and police said.
"There are now Greenpeace activists on the premises" of the Forsmark
nuclear power plant near Uppsala, north of Stockholm, police spokesman Christer
Nordstroem told AFP.
He said it remained unclear how many Greenpeace activists had managed to get
into the plant, but the environmental group itself sent out a statement earlier
saying around 30 would enter the facility to conduct a peaceful protest against
nuclear power use.
"The activists demand that Swedish members of parliament vote 'no' to new
nuclear power at a vote on June 17 and instead bet on renewable energy,"
the group said, adding that the protesters were prepared to stay put until the
day of the vote.
Sweden
,
which has 10 reactors at three power stations, announced last year it had
reversed a decision to phase out nuclear power, and the parliament is set to
vote Thursday on whether to expand the Scandinavian country's nuclear
facilities.
Greenpeace spokesman Ludvig Tillman told the TT news agency several activists
had been stopped by guards, but that "many succeeded in getting in".
The activists, who reportedly climbed over a fence to get in, were protesting
an expected "decision that will have consequences for hundreds of years if
you think of the waste nuclear power creates," he said.
"Replacing existing nuclear plants with new nuclear power would be a
mistake of historical proportions," he said in the Greenpeace statement.
Police spokesman Nordstroem said many police were on site.
"We are monitoring the situation," he said.
Forsmark spokesman Claes-Inge Andersson told TT plant authorities were also
following closely the protest, but said there was little worry the activists
would pose a security risk.
"It is one thing to manage to climb over a fence, but it should not be
possible for them to reach the vital parts" of the nuclear plant, he said,
adding that the activists "are not here to damage the plant. They just want to protest a
parliamentary decision."