This is the moment Emmanuel Macron was confronted by Greenpeace activists who accosted him on stage during a nuclear summit.
The protesters, dressed sharply in black suits and ties, interrupted Macron and UN nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi as they were greeting heads of state today.
They held banners bearing the Greenpeace logo and reading ‘Nuclear Power = Energy Insecurity’ and ‘Nuclear power fuels Russia’s war.’
One of them shouted at Macron, ‘Why are we still buying uranium from Russia?’ to which the president replied, ‘We produce nuclear power ourselves.’
France has its own uranium enrichment capacity, but also imports enriched uranium for its power plants, including from Russia, according to the latest customs data published by the French government.
Russia’s state nuclear company Rosatom accounted for about 44% of the global uranium enrichment capacity in 2025, according to the World Nuclear Association.
European nuclear power producers have struggled to wean themselves off these supplies four years after Russia invaded Ukraine.
Around 15 Greenpeace activists blocked arriving convoys outside the venue in Boulogne-Billancourt on the outskirts of Paris on Tuesday, the environmental campaigning group said in a statement.
France is hosting the second world nuclear energy summit on Tuesday, where world leaders will meet to discuss and promote nuclear power.
‘For Greenpeace France, the holding of such a summit is an anachronism, an event completely out of touch with reality and with the lessons to be learned from the tragic situations of the Russian aggression in Ukraine, the strikes on Iran, and the impacts of the worsening climate disruption,’ the group said.
EU chief Ursula von der Leyen today called Europe’s turn away from civilian nuclear power a ‘strategic mistake’, arguing that the Middle East war had exposed the continent’s fossil fuel ‘vulnerability’.
‘It was a strategic mistake for Europe to turn its back on a reliable, affordable source of low-emission power,’ she said at the opening of a nuclear energy summit just outside Paris as the US-Israeli war with Iran entered its second week.
‘For fossil fuels, we are completely dependent on expensive and volatile imports. They are putting us at a structural disadvantage to other regions,’ she said at the summit, which aims to boost the use of civilian nuclear energy.
‘The current Middle East crisis gives a stark reminder of the vulnerability it creates,’ she added.
‘We have home-grown low-carbon energy sources: nuclear and renewables. And together, they can become the joint guarantors of independence, security of supply, and competitiveness – if we get it right.’
Macron struck a similar note, saying civilian nuclear power helped provide energy sovereignty.
‘Nuclear power is key to reconciling both independence – and thus energy sovereignty – with decarbonisation, and thus carbon neutrality,’ Macron said at the second Nuclear Energy Summit.
‘We can see it in our current geopolitical context: when we are too dependent on hydrocarbons, they can become a tool of pressure, or even of destabilisation,’ he added.
Von der Leyen said that ‘while in 1990, one-third of Europe’s electricity came from nuclear, today it’s only close to 15 percent’.
She announced that the European Union would ‘create a 200-million-euro ($230-million) guarantee to support investment in innovative nuclear technologies’.
Nuclear energy fell into crisis after the 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan, which reinforced fears highlighted by the 1986 Chernobyl catastrophe.
But the growing international focus on energy sovereignty and the search for clean energies to counter global warming has reignited atomic interest.
Nuclear power accounts for about nine percent of electricity produced in the world, with some 440 reactors in around 30 countries, according to the World Nuclear Association.
