Greenpeace N-plant protest

Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu blesssed the Greenpeace ship Esperanza and its crew on Friday

MELKBOSSTRAND, South Africa -- Police have detained up to a dozen Greenpeace environmental protesters who tried to scale a South African nuclear power plant two days before the start of the Earth Summit.

Some of the demonstrators climbed a building at the French-designed Koeberg nuclear power plant on the coast near Cape Town on Saturday and strung up two yellow and black banners proclaiming "Nukes out of Africa -- Greenpeace."

The nuclear plant is the only one in Africa.

Police detained three of the anti-nuclear activists on the 15-metre (50 feet) high concrete building, which pumps water from the sea to cool the twin-domed reactor alongside, leaving another three dangling by wires from the installation.

They also seized two inflatable speedboats, each containing three people, that brought the protesters from the Greenpeace ship Esperanza, Greenpeace said.

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Police declined immediate comment. But the local provincial commissioner expressed shock that Greenpeace could reach the tightly guarded installation from the sea.

"We have to take firm action now, this situation is intolerable," commissioner Lennit Max told Reuters, adding the break-in "is a matter of concern for us, we will be looking into that."

Greenpeace wants to put pressure on about 100 world leaders at the 10-day summit opening on Monday to agree ways to protect the planet while cutting poverty. It fears that their promises will fall short of real action.

"This is Africa's one and only nuclear facility, it should be its last," said Mike Townsley of Greenpeace. "It creates deadly long-lived legacies of nuclear waste. It's a major terrorist threat, it's a proliferation threat and it's uneconomic.

"At a time when world leaders are meeting in Johannesburg to discuss how to solve the impending environmental crisis, and to meet the need for electricity of the two billion people who don't have any, we want to make the point that their needs cannot be met through nuclear power," he said.

During its building, the plant was attacked by the now-ruling African National Congress (ANC) in the 1970s as part of a protest against white minority rule.