Greenpeace Uses Kamikaze Drone as Political Protest Tool

We’ve seen many things in the drone industry to date: drones that catch whale snot; drones that perform aerial light shows; a drone that assists skydives.

But we haven’t yet seen a drone dressed as Superman deliberately flown into a nuclear power plant. At least not until this week in France.

So yes, you read that right. Environmental organization Greenpeace has crashed a drone disguised as Superman into the side of EDF’s Bugey nuclear power plant near Lyon, France. And it wasn’t an accident; it was a protest, a publicity stunt.

Greenpeace activists flew the drone into the no-fly zone around the nuclear plant and crashed it against the wall of the plant’s spent-fuel pool building. They did this for a couple of reasons.

First, they wanted to prove how easy it was to attack sensitive parts of a nuclear plant using a drone. And second, because they wanted to draw attention to the dangers of having spent-fuel pools relatively accessible to attackers.

Why they decided to dress up the drone as Superman is another question entirely.

“This action again highlights the extreme vulnerability of this type of buildings, which contain the highest amount of radioactivity in nuclear plants,” Greenpeace said.

“Spent-fuel pools must be turned into bunkers in order to make nuclear plants safer,” said Greenpeace France’s chief nuclear campaigner Yannick Rousselet.

You can watch the video below:

It’s fair to say that Greenpeace’s security breaches at nuclear plants across France have had an impact. In fact, they’ve sparked a parliamentary investigation into nuclear security, due to present its report tomorrow.

Back in October Greenpeace activists broke in and managed to launch fireworks over EDF’s Cattenom nuclear plant, despite security barriers.

It looks as though drones are the latest tools to be enlisted in the name of protest. We don’t anticipate Greenpeace and Intel collaborating on aerial light show propaganda anytime soon.