01.06.2007

Crane occupation continues

On Monday six Greenpeace activists, two British, one French and three Finns, arrived by boat at Finland’s fifth nuclear reactor in Olkiluoto on the country’s west coast and climbed the 100 metre boom and jib of a Mammoet MSD heavy lift revolving crane.
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The protestors occupied Mammoets MSD crane

The protestors have camped out at the top of the main boom, around 70 metres up, on Wednesday the two British and the French protester decided to come down and were promptly arrested and taken away.
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The main boom nose is where the protestors have camped

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A photo from the demonstrators inside one chord of the boom, they used safety cables and harnesses and were certainly well equipped

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Four of the six demonstrators

Greenpeace says that they are protesting against security breaches at the world's first third-generation European Pressurized Reactor (EPR). The organisation has demanded that a list compiled by the Finnish Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority containing ",500 quality breaches" since 2005 be made public.
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The reactor takes shape

The plant will be operated by Teollisuuden Voima Oy, a private electricity generation company owned by Finnish industrial and power companies and is being built by the French-German EPR consortium Framatome ANP - Siemens.

Greenpeace has also demanded that French nuclear group Areva and German Siemens refund public subsidies from the French and German states.

"If these demands are fulfilled we will climb down. We have enough supplies to stay up here for days," said Lauri Myllyvirta, one of the protesters on the crane. "We are not cold, we are well equipped," he added.

The Olkiluoto power plant was initially scheduled to open in mid-2009 after four years of work but is now set be fully operational in 2011 at the earliest.

According to a spokesman for the contractor 60 percent of the 1,500 “deviations” have already been fixed.