Nuclear tests in the Sahara: “Algiers is trying to put pressure on France” on the decontamination of the sites
This February 13 is the 64th anniversary of France's first nuclear test in Algeria in 1960. Algeria commemorates this date and has officially requested France, in 2021, to definitively take charge of site rehabilitation operations. de Reggane and In Ekker and assistance from France to provide topographical maps to locate nuclear waste burial areas.
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Start of the Tanezrouft track south of Reggane in Algeria. (Illustrative image) © Wikimedia common/Albert Backer
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For
Algeria
, this is one of the priority issues before turning the page with the period of French colonization. Jean-Marie Collin, director of Ican France, the French branch of the international campaign to abolish nuclear weapons, explains, speaking to
Houda Ibrahim
: “
After a long process, after pressure from civil society, there is finally obtained a law called the "Morin law", to recognize the victims and compensate the potential victims of French nuclear tests. A law that works willy-nilly and which has difficulty being known in Algeria, but we recognize the victims.
»
Read alsoAlgeria: the compensation law for victims of French nuclear tests available in Arabic
“
The question of depollution is something more new
”
He continues: “
The question of depollution is something more new, which has been raised in recent years by the Algerian State, which is also new because our campaign with Ican France, with the Armaments Observatory, has shown and proved in 2000 that there had been a voluntary policy of burying waste or anything that was radioactive by the French State, and that, until now, the French State refuses to communicate both the lists of what was buried, the areas where it was buried, and so it is on this aspect that we expect progress from France. And it is on this aspect that the Algerian state is also trying to put pressure on the French state. So, this is why the question of the rehabilitation of the old test sites is, in a way, the ultimate subject to be resurfaced and fully ironed out between the two States.
»
Also read: Algeria: under the sand, French nuclear waste
As a reminder, France carried out seventeen nuclear tests in the Algerian Sahara between 1960 and 1966.
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