The 180 or so atmospheric and underground tests at Moruroa and Fangatauf atolls have dispersed in the environment or created crude waste dumps underground of hundreds of kilograms of plutonium and other highly radioactive fission products. To say that French nuclear tests pose no problem to the environment is from an ecological point of view to affirm two things:
These two claims are obviously false:
atmospheric tests released into the air and ocean most of the radioactivity they produced. This radioactive contamination was measurable throughout the southern hemisphere. It contributed, along with American, Russian, British and Chinese tests to an increase in cancers and radiation-induced birth and genetic defects. The victims of this "third world war" are more numerous than those of Chernobyl, which is considered the largest industrial catastrophe in history.
Moreover, French tests, whether in the atmosphere or underground, have left enormous quantities of wastes at the test site: contaminated earth, waste from decontamination of equipment, contaminated clothes etc. There is no official acknowlegement of the storage, transfer or eventual clean-up of these thousands of tonnes of waste.
On July 25 1979, an explosion created serious fractures in the side of the atoll ( which were partially filmed by the Cousteau Mission) and a subsequent tidal wave engulfed installations.
In spring 1981, cyclones removed radioactive waste covering a zone of 30,000 square metres in the northern part of Moruroa atoll.
In 1992, the French Government, wanting to contradict a study undertaken by Greenpeace (the Buske Report) requested the International Atomic Energy Agency undertake a study of plankton sampled 12 miles from Moruroa atoll. The study revealed contamination by plutonium which could only have come from a radioactive source, whether it resulted from fissuring of the atoll, dumping of waste in the zone. No official explanation was given.
Restrictions prevent long stays on Fangataufa atoll where larger tests have been conducted since 1988 because of earlier contamination from atmospheric tests. Cousteau's report in 1987 concluded: " The premature and accelerated ageing of the [Moruroa] atoll explains certainly in great part the imminent transfer of high yield tests to Fangataufa."
More generally, the disastrous consequences for the environment of nuclear weapons production has been largely recognised by the United States and Russia. An official estimate by the United States puts the costs of stabilising the environmental problems at nuclear weapons production sites at $240 billion over the next 30 years.
Claims that radiation from underground tests will be confined within the atoll in the long term are simply not credible.
In 1987 ... volcanic rock at Moruroa and the depth necessary to do the tests in a wayto enable us to calculate the exact mechanical impact of nuclear tests were not supplied by the French authorities.
The process of vitrification of wastes in the atoll's basalt structure is far from being as simply as CEA experts claim. Vitrification is difficult to master even in an industrial environment, and completely unpredictable under testing conditions. Chimneys and fractures allowing water to permeate into the atoll have been created. The evidence suggests that shocks caused by successive explosions have created an additional problem in confining the radioactive materials.
A simple comparison with the research required for the storage of high level radioactive waste in France illustrates the discrepancy in approach to safety between the two. What would be the reaction if nuclear waste was stored under the sea in a region regularly impacted by very large explosions?
The French authorities have frequently pointed out the low population density around the atolls of Moruroa and Fangataufa. It must be remembereed that several European countries, situated two or three hundred miles from Chernobyl were seriously affected by that disaster. Ocean current can be extremely effective carriers of radioactive contamination, and the accumulation of radiation in the food chain would do irreparable damage to the maritime resources of the coastal states of the Pacific.
With this evidence, the French Minister for the Environmnent, Corinne Lepage and President Chirac cannot deny the effects of nuclear tests on the environment of French Polynesia and international waters. Neither can the claims that tests are safe coming from the military and nuclear industry be credible, given the vested interests of these experts. Only a fully independent and comprehensive study over several years which has full access to all data currently "military secret", and which has unrestricted opportunities to sample and monitor the atmospheric, oceanic and terrestrial environments of Moruroa and Fangataufa can hope to establish the real environmental consequences of nuclear testing at the atolls.