Protests Block Atom Agency in Moscow : Russia: Greenpeace demonstrators handcuff themselves to door. They oppose plans for 26 new nuclear plants.

Greenpeace activists handcuffed themselves to the door of the Russian Atomic Energy Ministry and blocked its main entrance Wednesday as part of their mounting campaign to fight government plans for 26 new nuclear plants across Russia.

The protest lasted only two hours and ended peacefully when police managed to unlock the handcuffs and remove the padlocked bar across the ministry’s front door. Officers hauled in three activists for questioning but said they were not actually under arrest because at most they would be fined or warned.

Despite its quiet ending, the Greenpeace protest served notice on Russia’s nuclear overseers that the high-profile environmental defense group plans an energetic battle against the new power plants.

“We’re playing with the idea of doing these blockades every day,” said Dima Litvinov, Greenpeace coordinator in Russia.

“It’s time that the mad white elephant of nuclear power is stopped once and for all,” Litvinov said. “It’s obscene to speak of ‘safe’ nuclear energy in the country that gave us Chernobyl, Chelyabinsk, Tomsk and numerous other accidents.”

The latest serious nuclear accident in Russia occurred near the Siberian town of Tomsk in early April, when a chemical reaction in a waste-processing factory blew through the plant’s roof and sent a small radioactive cloud into the sparsely populated region. Officials admit to 205 “incidents” or irregularities at Russian nuclear plants last year.

Despite the Soviet record of accidents, including the worst in history at Chernobyl in 1986, Russian atomic energy officials maintained Wednesday that Russia’s safety is among the best in the world and that the country simply cannot satisfy its energy needs without nuclear plants.

“If the kids want to play, let them play,” said Vladimir Vinogradov, a department head at the ministry, as he looked at the 26 mock power stations made of cardboard boxes that activists had rigged to spark and smoke on the ministry steps. “No matter what they do, atomic energy still lives.”

Under former Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, Moscow had begun to back away from nuclear power, responding in part to pressure from local residents afraid of Chernobyl-type accidents.

But last December, the Russian government approved a plan for building 26 new nuclear plants over the next 20 years.

Greenpeace has begun to step up its program in the former Soviet Union, staging a well-publicized boat trip into the forbidden nuclear testing ground of Novaya Zemlya in the far north and countering official misinformation on the Tomsk nuclear accident.