Giant Auckland banner: Keep the Cup Nuclear Free

Greenpeace today hung a banner from the cliffs of Torbay, Auckland with the message ‘Keep the Cup Nuclear Free’ to show opposition to the French nuclear industry’s involvement in the Cup.

Greenpeace activists absailed down the face of the cliff to hang the eight by eight meter banner that features a radioactive shadow in the shape of a death's head behind an ‘A’ similar to Areva's logo.

“Greenpeace painted the radioactive shadow and death’s head behind the ‘A’ similar to Areva’s, so people can clearly see that behind the façade of being a sailing sponsor is a deadly nuclear business,” said Bunny McDiarmid Greenpeace spokesperson..

Greenpeace is opposed to Areva's sponsorship because their group of companies are shipping plutonium and nuclear waste through our region, pollute the marine environment with radioactive waste on a daily basis and are involved in the development of nuclear weapons through their majority owner the French Atomic Energy Commission.

“It is inappropriate for an industry with a history and current practice of contaminating the environment to try and clean up its image by associating itself with the clean, green image of sailing,” said McDiarmid.

Areva was formed in 2001 from a merger between the plutonium reprocessing company COGEMA, the nuclear reactor construction company Framatome, and FCI, a maker of electrical connectors. Areva is 78.96 percent owned by the Commissariat a L'Énergie Atomique (CEA – the French Atomic Energy Commission) and 5.19 percent owned by the French government.

“Areva is here to re-launch itself and make new business using the French sailing team, the America’s Cup and nuclear-free New Zealand as the venue. Behind the name is an industry with a terrible environmental record and which is intimately involved in the nuclear weapons business,” she said.

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