The sand cloud hit much of Europe, like here in Anzere, Switzerland on February 6.

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LAURENT GILLIERON / AP / SIPA

  • In February, two episodes of pollution due to dust from the Sahara were recorded in France, coloring the sky or the snow in some regions with ocher.

  • Last week, the Acro association published a press release warning of the presence of radioactive particles in one of these two episodes.

  • "We must clearly distinguish between situations of air contamination which require sanitary measures, such as the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, and this presence of artificial radioactive elements, which do not require any particular precaution", explains Bruno Chareyron, engineer. in nuclear physics.

On February 13, 1960, France carried out its first nuclear test, baptized “Gerboise bleue” in the Sahara desert in Algeria.

Sixty years later, the radioactive fallout from French nuclear tests is still palpable, as far as Europe, alert specialists.

On February 24, the Association for the Control of Radioactivity in the West (Acro) published measurements of radioactivity in sand clouds from the Sahara.

In February, France and part of Europe experienced two such weather episodes, giving the sky an ocher tint.

Result: about 80,000 Becquerels of cesium 137 per square kilometer, estimates the association, after having measured the thin layer of particles that had landed on a car.

Artificial radioactivity

"In general, in the dust in the ambient air, there is always a certain level of natural radioactivity", explains Bruno Chareyron, engineer in nuclear physics, director of Criirad, an independent research laboratory on radioactivity. .

"But this dust from the Sahara contains particles of artificial radioactivity, such as cesium 137", he explains.

A marker of human nuclear tests, which move in favor of meteorological episodes, such as the wind here, or accidental phenomena, such as the fires around Chernobyl this summer.

“These events resuspend these elements in the air,” notes Bruno Chareyron.

No sanitary measure necessary

No impact on health is to be feared, "even if the presence of dust at high levels in the air, apart from radioactivity, should not be trivialized", qualifies the specialist.

“In your body, due to the natural radioactivity of potassium, you can measure 6,000 Becquerels.

The area measured by the association measures one kilometer by one kilometer, it is an extremely low concentration, ”compares Geneviève Baumont, retired expert from the Research Institute for Nuclear Safety (IRSN).

"We must clearly distinguish between situations of air contamination which require sanitary measures, such as the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, and this presence of artificial radioactive elements, which do not require special precautions", insists Bruno Chareyron.

More than 200 French nuclear attacks

"This event serves rather to remember the past of France in Saraha, it is rather memorial", continues Geneviève Beaumont.

"At the very beginning of the 1960s, France carried out atmospheric nuclear tests in the Algerian Sahara (Reggane) exposing its own soldiers to radiation but also the sedentary and nomadic populations of the region", we can read in the press release of the Acro.

Since this first test in the Sahara in 1960 until the last experiment in 1996 in French Polynesia, France will have carried out 210 nuclear blasts.

“In 1965, we had an incredible radioactive concentration in the northern hemisphere, which was not far from that of Chernobyl,” recalls Geneviève Baumont.

An experiment finally stopped in January 1996 by Jacques Chirac.

More than sixty years after these tests in the region, part of the radioactive elements are still present in the soil, in particular in the Sahara, causing local contamination.

On February 7, Algerian General Bouzid Boufrioua again demanded that France decontaminate these sites, on the principle of "polluter pays" recognized by the UN.

In France, this fallout of radioactive particles is chronic and closely monitored by multiple beacons placed by different organizations in the territory.

Despite calls from various groups for denuclearization, there are still more than 2,000 atomic bombs on Earth, of which around 190 are in France.

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