Greenpeace activists storm Macron's nuclear summit stage over Russia uranium ties

Two Greenpeace activists broke onto the stage at the opening of the IAEA Nuclear Energy Summit in Boulogne-Billancourt on Tuesday, interrupting French President Emmanuel Macron and IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi as they greeted attending heads of state at the global gathering convened to promote nuclear power.

The protesters, dressed in black suits and ties, unfurled banners reading "Nuclear Power = Energy Insecurity" and "Nuclear power fuels Russia's war." One activist shouted directly at Macron: "Why are we still buying uranium from Russia?"

Macron replied tersely: "We produce nuclear power ourselves."

The exchange exposed a tension the summit's host would have preferred to avoid. France does enrich uranium domestically, but it also imports enriched uranium, including from Russia, according to French government customs data. The World Nuclear Association reported that Russia's state nuclear company Rosatom accounted for about 44% of global uranium enrichment capacity in 2025, and European nuclear power producers have struggled to reduce their reliance on Russian supplies four years after Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.

The onstage interruption was part of a broader demonstration. Around 15 additional Greenpeace activists blocked convoys of arriving delegations outside the venue in the Paris suburb.

Greenpeace France issued a pointed statement condemning the summit itself. "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 summit, the second world nuclear energy summit hosted by France, drew heads of state and government alongside European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who appeared alongside Macron and Grossi for an official group photograph.

Nuclear power currently accounts for about nine percent of global electricity production, with roughly 440 reactors operating across approximately 30 countries, according to the World Nuclear Association. Proponents at the summit argue the technology is indispensable for decarbonizing energy systems; critics contend it introduces strategic vulnerabilities, particularly when fuel supply chains run through adversarial states.

The Greenpeace intervention gave those critics an unscripted moment of maximum visibility. By confronting the summit's symbolic center, the two activists forced the uranium-Russia question onto the public record at a venue where the host government had positioned nuclear energy as a cornerstone of both climate strategy and European energy independence.

Whether the two activists were detained by security services following the incident was not immediately confirmed, nor was any official response from the Elysée Palace or IAEA beyond Macron's on-the-spot reply.

For Macron, who has staked considerable political capital on a nuclear renaissance both domestically and across Europe, the protest encapsulated the core vulnerability in that argument: a supply chain in which the world's largest enrichment capacity still belongs to the country whose war France has helped finance through continued purchases.