France

Test Years

150 Test Shots in French Polynesia

France undertook 30 years of nuclear weapon tests between 1966 and 1996 at Moruroa and Fangataufa. A cohort of workers who were exposed during the French nuclear weapons test program at Moruroa Atoll in the Pacific are represented by Association Moruroa E Tatou. The organization has been critical of the French government’s initial denial of harm, and limited commitment to compensation to total value of $13.5 million. The president of Association Moruroa E Tatou estimates that between 15,000 and 30,000 people worked on the test program, but the official number remains a national secret.

Officially, France conducted 181 nuclear test explosions in Mururoa. Representing bout 150 holes containing very dangerous levels of radioactivity. The Nuclear Association stated if the atoll were to collapse it could also trigger a 15 meter-high tsunami. The association wants independent experts to be allowed to conduct a study to provide more information about the danger of the atoll collapsing.

Mr. Roland Oldham, président de l’association Moruroa e tatou, says the report doesn’t properly emphasis the serious threat posed by the buried radioactive material. “We have to warn everybody because the problem will not only concern some of the atolls that are only 100 km from Mururoa. But I think it will be a really big problem to the environment if this nuclear radioactivity is to be diluted in the ocean and from there we have no control over what would happen.”

Test Years 1966 – 1996

A leaked report has raised new fears that Mururoa Atoll, the site of French nuclear testing in the Pacific, is in danger of collapsing. The French government, since 2010, has kept secret that Mururoa Atoll, the site of French nuclear testing in the Pacific, is in danger of collapsing, according to Mururoa e Tatou (MET), the Nuclear Association in French Polynesia.

The Nuclear Association’s president, Roland Oldham, told Radio Australia’s Pacific Beat program that radioactive material could be released into the Pacific Ocean if the atoll were to collapse. (Listen to the report here.) French nuclear safety official, Marcel Jurien de la Graviere, suggested that people on nearby Tureia Atoll could be exposed to radiation 300 times the level in France. If the atoll collapses there could be international ramifications.