New revelations on the health consequences of nuclear tests in French Polynesia
The Dione nucelar test, conducted in 1971 in the Mururoa archipelago, an atoll of the Tuamotu archipelago, located in French Polynesia.
Getty Images - Bilderwelt Gallery
Text by: Agnès Rougier
6 mins
Between 1966 and 1974, the French army carried out more than 40 atmospheric nuclear tests in the heart of the Pacific atolls, in French Polynesia.
Thousands of declassified documents, analyzed by the investigative website Disclose and members of the Science and Security program at Princeton University, show that an area as large as Europe has been affected by the radioactive fallout , contaminating 110,000 people.
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Of the 193 nuclear tests carried out at Mururoa and Fangataufa, French Polynesia, 46 were atmospheric tests.
On July 2, 1966, the first atomic bomb, code name: “Aldebaran”, exploded on a barge anchored in a blue lagoon near Mururoa.
A few microseconds after the explosion, a fireball of several thousand degrees, rises in the air and vaporizes everything around.
As it cools, the mass turns into a huge radioactive cloud, this famous "atomic mushroom", which within 10 minutes will be dispersed by the wind.
424 km away, the 450 inhabitants of the Gambier Islands - renowned for the cultivation of black pearls - did not know they had just received a radioactive shower.
A non-existent "prevention plan"
Before the first explosion, the French army high command had decided to do nothing to protect the populations, in order to keep a positive image of this testing program.
The French army had, in principle, foreseen everything: the military maps which were declassified draw a "
radiological danger zone
", forming a cone of a thousand kilometers towards the east, from Mururoa, but the islands Gambier being just outside this cone, no protective measures were taken.
And 3 hours before the explosion, the weather forecast announced a wind blowing at an altitude of 1500 m, towards the south-east in the direction of Mangareva, the most populated island of the archipelago.
The army heard about it, but the bomb went off anyway.
The July 2 explosion caused radioactivity in the soil amounting to 61 million becquerels / m2, a level reached only during the most serious nuclear disasters.
The Gambier Islands have been contaminated 31 times by radioactive fallout.
Official radiological zoning of 1970. © Declassified document.
Tests with heavy consequences
In the population of the Gambier Islands, there were, according to INSEE figures, 61 children between 4 and 8 years old present during the first explosion.
However, children are particularly sensitive to radiation, and especially their thyroid, the gland most sensitive to radioactive iodine, present in the fallout.
On all the atolls affected by radioactive fallout, the number of cancers is higher than the average and the most plausible hypothesis is that they are the consequence of nuclear explosions.
A report requested by the local government of French Polynesia in February 2020 shows, in fact, the abnormal abundance of thyroid cancers in the population;
this is the first official document referring to it, but it has not been made public.
In addition, the
NGO Disclose
has collected numerous testimonies from entire families decimated by various cancers: breast, skin and throat cancers, but also numerous cancers of the thyroid.
Other trials, other victims
In 1971, France began its fifth year of nuclear weapon testing in the South Pacific.
This time it is an enriched uranium bomb, code name: "Enceladus".
At 10:15 p.m. on June 12, 1971, the bomb explodes, expelling 500 kilotons of energy, a giant atomic cloud begins to be pushed by the wind, it will reach the small atoll of Tureia, in the Tuamotou archipelago, 117 km from Mururoa, at 7 a.m. the next morning.
The 68 inhabitants of Tureia, were not evacuated before the test.
However, it rains during the night of the 12th to the 13th, and the falling rain contaminates the population, the drinking water reserves and the soil.
The Atomic Energy Commission - CEA - then draws up maps of the contamination, but they are not communicated to the population.
Finally, in 1974, a bomb with the code name "Centaur" exploded despite unfavorable weather forecasts.
Disclose investigators estimate that it has infected 110,000 people in Tahiti and the surrounding islands.
The responsibility of the French state
The French State - CIVEN, Comité d'Indemnisation des Victimes d'Essais Nucléaires - recognizes a victim of fallout when the person has received a dose of radioactivity greater than 1 millisievert (mSv) per year, but so far few victims were officially recognized.
454 victims were compensated in November 2019, and a recent report from the Polynesian Ministry of Health suggests a figure of 10,000 victims who can claim compensation, but the calculations of Disclose bring back 10 times more.
In 2006, the CEA made an estimate of the contaminations and therefore of the potential victims, but Disclose shows that the measurements which recorded the highest levels of contamination have disappeared from the maps.
Their calculations in reality largely underestimate the impact of radioactive fallout, and therefore the recognition of the number of potential victims.
Find out more:
Disclose / Mururoa files survey
Nuclear Test Victims Compensation Committee
(
CIVEN
)
Atomic Energy Commission (CEA)
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