I think I could see the French sinking a Greenpeace ship if they try to screw around with the french nuclear waste to much
Not with a nuclear submarine, and not so publicly.
If Greenpeace was stupid enough to mess around with a French military vessel, then the most they're going to get are some warning shots before they disperse or a boarding crew detaining the activists in a French military installation until they can be processed by a court of law.
The whole reason the French blew up the Rainbow Warrior in dock with a covert team was to minimise casualties, especially loss of life, but also to decrease the chances of capture or detection and political embarrassment for France. Getting blown up by a nuclear submarine isn't so subtle now, is it?
Apart from the risk of detection via analysis of the wreckage, you better hope to God that there are no survivors, otherwise your game is up. There is also the question of how exactly the French SSN/SSBN would avoid detection by their own allies, or at least the British and Americans. Fellatio Nelson will know more about this, but don't NATO allies (Or at least the British, French and Americans) share data on SSN/SSBN locations, and in some cases carry out joint patrols and division of work? How will the French get around this? If the submarine goes 'offline', surely that will raise eyebrows in London or Washington? Could they falsify the data? Regardless, someone's going to know something's up.
If the French are found out, take the political embarrassment and fallout of OTL Rainbow Warrior and multiply it by a million... the French sinking an unarmed Greenpeace vessel in New Zealand or international waters, with a nuclear submarine? It's just not worth the risk. The French may be flamboyant at times, dramatic at others, but they're not silly enough to take such a risk, or do something as extreme and overkill as this.
Now I expect Fellatio Nelson or Bill Garvin to tell me I'm talking bollocks.
