Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
Under a Cloud of Secrecy: The French Nuclear Tests in the Southeastern Pacific Author(s): Bengt Danielsson Reviewed work(s): Source: Ambio, Vol. 13, No. 5/6, The South Pacific (1984), pp. 336-341 Published by: Springer on behalf of Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4313070 . Accessed: 23/03/2012 00:40
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http://www.jstor.org in the SoutheasternPacific
BY BENGT DANIELSSON
The use of the Pacificas a testingground for nuclear weapons is perhapsone of the darkestchapters in the historyof the entireRegion. Before the PartialTest Ban Treatywent into effect in 1963, the US had testedat least 103 nuclearbombs in the Region.After 1963, however, the Americans,British and Sovietsmoved their nucleartesting programs out of the Pacificpermanently. Today, only the French insiston testingtheir nuclear bombs in the Pacific,on two Polynesianislands: Moruroaand Fangataufa.Since 1966 the Frenchhave explodedat least 105 bombs. Thedevastation caused by this testingis a continuingsource of con- troversyin the SouthPacific. But relevant fallout data from all the testshave never been made public by the Frenchgovernment and the actualextent of the contaminationof FrenchPolynesia and its neighborsfrom radioactive fallout remainsunknown.
Two Pacific islands have become infamous By this time, France had detonated six Most political, church and civic leaders throughout the world: Bikini and Eniwe- nuclear bombs in the Sahara Desert and in French Polynesia immediately voiced tok. Between 1946 and 1958, 66 atomic was already looking for a new site, since strong fears that any nuclear tests made in bombs (including at least ten H-bombs) Algerian independence was impending. the Tuamotus might, as the American tests were detonated on these two islands, lead- Unavoidably, France followed the Ameri- did in Micronesia, adversely affect the ing to the irradiation of hundreds of Mi- can example and decided to establish a health of the 7 000 people living there. cronesians. But less known are the nuclear new nuclear test base in the Pacific. From These fears were played down by French tests made at two other locations: a political standpoint the choice seemed cabinet ministers, admirals and generals, Johnston Island and Christmas Island. even safer than the American decision to who swore that the French bombs were to Both are located in uninhabited areas of test in the Micronesian Trust Territory- be exploded only when the wind was blow- the Pacific. At Johnston Island, 1100 theoretically under the jurisdiction of the ing from the north, towards the empty kilometers southwest of Hawaii, US Air UN-because France had several colonial- ocean between Polynesia and Antarctica Force planes dropped two H-bombs in type possessions there. Among these in- (2). 1958, and then another ten A- and H- cluded the 80 Tuamotuan atolls in French By the beginning of July 1966, after bombs in 1962. On Christmas Island, the Polynesia. three years of intense preparations, the British detonated their first home-made Moruroa testing base was operational. The H-bomb in May 1957, and during the next first bomb was placed on a barge anchored fifteen months tested six more H-bombs THE BOMBS FALL in the lagoon and detonated. The result and two "ordinary" A-bombs (see Figure The islands eventually chosen were the two was a catastrophe-all the water contained 1). small, uninhabited atolls of Moruroa and in the shallow reef basin was sucked up Then in 1962 the British "loaned" Fangataufa, located in the southeast into the air and then rained down, cover- Christmas Island to the Americans, who corner of the Tuamotu archipelago (Fig- ing all islets with heaps of irradiated fish were then (like the Soviets) rushing to ure 2). No nuclear arms nation had ever and clams, whose slowly rotting flesh con- make the maximum number of atmos- tried the technically very difficult and tinued to stink for weeks (3). pheric tests during the last year of grace therefore costly and dangerous task of The next bomb was therefore dropped before the 1963 PTB (Partial Test Ban) making underground tests in the narrow from an airplane at an altitude of 16 000 treaty came into effect. The "nuclear base of a porous coral island, and the meters, one hundred kilometers south of fireworks" which shook this atoll from French technicians sent out to Polynesia in Moruroa, over the empty ocean. Since April through July 1962, proved to be the 1962 totally excluded this option in favor there was nobody there to make any scien- most concentrated series of tests ever of atmospheric tests. There was one seri- tific records of the experiment, the whole carried out, for not less than 25 bombs, of ous inconvenience, however; Moruroa and exercise was totally worthless. Two days which at least three were H-bombs in the Fangataufa were surrounded to the west, later, an untriggered bomb was exposed to ten megaton range, were detonated (1). north and east by inhabited islands. a "security test" on the ground, which was
336 AMBIO VOL. 13 NO. 54 1-f successfulin as much as it did not go off. U.S. S. R. But on the other hand, the case broke and its plutoniumcontents spilled out over the 0 <>, Ar . . reef. In the sanguine hope of containing 'oIt the radiationsubstances, the contaminated la area was covered over with bitumen. All these bizarreexperiments were sim- JAPAN PACIFIC OCEAN U.S.A. ply rehearsalsfor the grand opening bang CHINA of the new Centre d'Experimentation du
0 *S ., Pacifique(CEP for short) which was to be Enewetak .%. . . Hawaii performedon September 10, 1966, in the MICRONESIA OV li Is.r ana . 0. presence of the godfather of the French lb Bikini I& 4 .- Johnston nuclear striking force, President-General 11.6 --;,,.Marshall"#4 .*. 1. "I" Palmyra ,O-, O.., I..;. . Charlesde Gaulle himself. As duringpre- roline 1. I. 0--- ..:.,* Christmas vious tests, all techniciansand troops were ". ..:..- , r, %*.. - evacuatedto another island, while on the , . , *W.. .. . 41 i., c". P.. .. t . appointed day de Gaulle embarked on a Samoa t, c,9 Monte Bello , .... FRENCH warship, especially equipped with protec- .. . .." ;- 1. .(P-.. . -.. , .POLYNESIA tive iron shields and sprinklersfor washing 0't:4'Fiji61'..Tahiti .. - -.. ., AUSTRALIA. Tonga away radioactive dust, which remained /0 close enough to Moruroato allow him to watch the glorious event from the bridge. /ITuamotu This time the bomb, or rather the box Ernu Field Group Mar containingthe 120 kiloton charge,was sus- linga NEW ZEALAND I pended 600 meters above the lagoon, from a blimp, anchoredto the reef. Figure 1. Map of South Pacific showing locations of major test sites for nuclear weapons.
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AMBIO, 1984 337 Americansin 1952, the Russians in 1953 such inspectors had ever been spotted, and Polynesia during the past ten years, and and the British in 1957-they detonated even more surprising, the French National (2) that the radioactivity in the islands of their first thermonuclearbomb, which had Radiation Laboratory was forbidden to Polynesia, taken as a whole, has stayed a yield of 2.5 megatons. The place chosen send any experts to French Polynesia, within the limits of the fluctuations of the was Fangataufa, 40 kilometers south of where all radiation studies were entrusted natural radioactivity." Moruroa, where, up to then, only a 150- to French army doctors in the pay of the As all readers will certainly agree, these kiloton A-bomb had been tested. After CEP who refused to divulge the facts and were extremely vague answers to ques- this big thermonuclearblast in 1968, Fan- figures on which they based their frequent tions which the deputy had never asked. gataufawas so heavilycontaminated that it bland assurances that the tests were per- An attempt by Francis Sanford to enlist was declared off-limits for all human be- fectly harmless. the support of French politicians and ings, and remained so for the next six In fact, the only published studies of any church leaders was only slightly more suc- years. Consequently,the next H-bomb of relevance to the radiation problem ema- cessful. Thanks to the active help (includ- the 1968 test series had to be detonated at nated from Japanese scientists working for ing some financing) of the leader of the Moruroa-which thereafter was aban- the World Health Organization, who col- small radical socialist party, Jean-Jaques doned for more than one year. lected data on ciguatera fish poisoning Servan-Schreiber, half a dozen deputies, As for the fifty inhabited atolls in the in French Polynesia in the 1970s. Up to ministers and priests flew out to Tahiti at Tuamotus, shelters had to be built in a then, the CEP doctors had always taken the end of June 1973, to participate in an great hurry on three of the easternmost great pains to point out that this type of anti-nuclear meeting attended by 5000 ones. Each time a test was made in 1968 fish poisoning, resulting in vomiting, Polynesians. However, the protests went the hapless islanders were locked up in headache, fever, trembling and paralyses: almost unnoticed and certainly unheeded these shelters for a day or two and each 1) existed already in the days of Captain in France. time their homes also had to be "decon- Cook, and 2) fish become toxic not be- All the while, the New Zealand and Aus- taminated"by sprayingthem with sea wa- cause they are irradiated, but because they tralian radiation laboratories had con- ter. Quite exceptionally,the 60 inhabitants ingest micro-organisms which grow on tinued to register a steady increase of of Tureia, 125 kilometers north of broken and damaged corals. Consequently strontium and cesium fallout-especially Moruroa,were also evacuatedto Tahition their conclusion was that the ciguatera in the milk-in their national territories one occasion (5). type of fish poisoning could not be blamed and throughout the Pacific islands. By on the nuclear tests (7). 1971 the figures had reached the same The impartial studies made by the level as in 1963, when the full effect was HEALTHEFFECTS Japanese toxicologists and ichthyologists felt from the frenzied test program The 30 elected representativesof the Poly- clearly demonstrated, however: 1) that ci- launched just before the deadline imposed nesian people, who form the local parlia- guatera had become a serious problem in by the PTB (10). More and more civic ment called the TerritorialAssembly, be- French Polynesia only after the nuclear associations, ecological groups, church gan to wonder aloud about the ill-effects tests had begun, and 2) that the annual bodies, trade unions and political parties all these accidents and high-yield blasts number of reported cases-between 700 in these couintries voiced protests. These might have on the health, not only of the and 800-was higher than in all the re- were followed by nationwide boycotts of Tuamotu islanders, but of the population maining islands south of the Equator taken French goods, airlines and shipping com- of French Polynesia as a whole. From together. Even more revealing was the panies. The mail service to and from 1963-65 a team of scientistsfrom the pres- geographical distribution within French France was also halted by Australian and tigious Museum of Natural History in Polynesia, for ciguatera epidemics occur- New Zealand postal workers. Unavoid- Paris, on the invitationof the Ministryfor red above all in the islands where the ably, some protests took a violent form, as Defense, carried ouit an inventory of the French army had dredged and deposited for instance when the French consulates in faunaand flora of the Tuamotuislands. At garbage and where French warships regu- Sydney and Auckland were bombed. Lit- the requestof their sponsor, they had also larly had been cleaned after radiation ex- tle by little, the protests and boycotts listed the marine animals best suited for posure. In other words, although the army spread to other countries, both in South tracing radioactive fallout, due to their doctors had been right in maintaining that America and Southeast Asia. Both the UN propensityto bioaccumulatelow radiation ciguatera fish poisoning was not directly Conference on the Human Environment, doses. These turnedout to be the tridacna linked to the tests, the destruction of the held in Stockholm in June 1972, and the clams, the turbo shells and the squids, of environment by the CEP outfits was indi- UN General Assembly (meeting later that which the islanders consume huge quan- rectly responsible for it (8, 9). year) condemned the French tests. At the tities (6). It may also be of some interest to quote latter occasion not less than 105 nations American specialists, who had under- what the highest French authority, the voted against France, whose only allies taken similar field work in the Micro- minister for Public Health, had to say in were Portugal, China and Albania. nesianislands, had alreadydiscovered that the eighth year of the nuclear testing pro- both coconuts and coconut crabs regu- gram about the health risks in French larly eaten there (like in the Tuamotu ar- Polynesia. Here is the complete text of the chipelago) easily become contaminated. written question submitted by the Deputy PROTESTSMOUNT Another universal source of contamina- for French Polynesia, Francis Sanford, Carried by this protest wave, the govern- tion in all atolls is the rain water, because along with the minister's reply: ments of Australia and New Zealand on the drops drag down to earth radioactive "Question number 1711, May 25, 1973: May 9, 1973, instituted proceedings in the particles injected into the air by nuclear Mr Sanford asks the minister for Public International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the explosions. Worst of all, the rainwateron Health and Social Security: (1) if he is able Hague against France, on the grounds that which the atoll dwellersdepend entirelyis to indicate the exact number of deaths due the fallout from the French tests at storedin concretetanks, which resultsin a to cancer that have occurred in French Moruroa had polluted their national rapid evaporation and subsequent high Polynesia during the past ten years, and territories (11). France countered by refus- concentrationof radionuclides. (2) if he can undertake an evaluation of ing to recognize the competence of the ICJ the amount of radioactive contamination in defense matters. The court decided that existing in the following three French radioactive pollution across international INADEQUATESAFEGUARDS Polynesian islands: Hao, Tureia and Man- boundaries was not a defense but a health At the time when these French surveys gareva. matter and issued on June 22 an interim were made in the Tuamotus,the CEP high "Reply, dated September 15, 1973: injunction ordering France to cease all command had told the assemblymenthat Mr Poniatowski, minister for Public nuclear testing, until the case was closed as soon as the tests began, inspectorswere Health and Social Security, informs the (12). to circulate among the islands to check honorable member of parliament that he When it became obvious that the French radiationlevels. If by any chance they dis- has no direct responsibility for the terri- government was going to disregard this in- covered food items which representedthe tory of Polynesia. He is nevertheless able junction, the new Prime Minister of New slightest health hazard, a ban on eating to state: (1) that the frequency of cancer Zealand, Norman Kirk, took the unpre- them was to be imposed immediately.No and leukemia has remained unchanged in cedented step of sending a warship to
338 AMBIO VOL. 13 NO. 5-6 'mk
The protest vessel Fri was seized by French commandos in July 1973 in internationalwaters as It tried to stop further testing by continuing to linger In the area.
Moruroa with a cabinet minister and a These world-wide protests, involving coral, and gratefullyaccepted the Ameri- group of pressmenon board. This was an manyuseful tradingpartners, could not be can offer to share its testing facilities in excellent way of keeping the issue alive. as easily waved aside by the French gov- Nevada. But more annoyingto the Frenchbombers ernment as the ten-year-long protests of The most sensible solution open to Pres- was no doubt the presence, since early the Polynesian people, which had never ident Giscardd'Estaing in the summer of June, of three civilian protest vessels, receivedany internationalattention. After 1974 would have been to recall the cruisingoff Moruroa just outside French President Pompidou died in April 1974, Moruroateam to France to start drilling, territorial waters. For contrary to the the long overdue decision to cease testing after the Americanand Soviet example, in crews of the New Zealand warships, the in the atmosphere was made by his the solid ground of some uninhabitedre- young men and women on board these successorGiscard d'Estaing. But not until gion. But this obviouschoice was not made, three small yachtshad no protectionwhat- anothereight atomic bombs had been det- mainly because of political reasons-most soever against radioactive fallout. They onated at Moruroa or dropped from air- Frenchmenwould not have approvedthe acted, of course, on the assumptionthat planes over the ocean, between July and idea. the CEP bombers would hesitate on September, 1974. Incidentally, these For this reason, the desperate French humanitariangrounds to detonate their farewell fireworkssurpassed all the previ- armyengineers had to attempt, from 1975 bombs. ous ones. For exemple, in Papeete, the on, the delicate task of erecting oil rigs on This turned out to be correct, for after only localityin FrenchPolynesia for which the narrowcoral reef of Moruroaand drill- having postponed the tests for six weeks a figure is available,the total Beta activity ing down 800-1000 meters to the underly- for this very reason, the French military in the air was 1460mBq/m3, as against3 in ing basaltrock. Then after havinglowered authoritiesin the end saw no other way out Auckland, New Zealand (14). a bomb to the bottom of the shaft, they of this dilemmabut to order a commando Bikini and Eniwetok, where the Ameri- had to plug it with a concrete fill, so as to unit (including frogmen armed with cans tested in the atmosphere between preventventing of gaseous fission products knives) to board and seize the protest ves- 1946 and 1958, are atolls of exactly the like kryptonand xenon. sels and imprisonthe crews, who had com- same type as Moruroa and Fangataufa, Right from the beginning, the army en- mitted no offense, since they had been and therefore equally unsuitable for gineers claimed that all radioactive sub- very carefulto patrolsolely in internation- undergroundtesting. This is why the US stances released during a blast would be al waters. Short of opening fire there was Micronesiantask force moved lock, stock trapped and sealed in the cavity created nothingthe New Zealand frigate could do and barrelto the Nevada desert. The Brit- when the surroundingrocks were melted to preventthe "piraticalseizure" (13). Be- ish government, which also in 1957-58 by the enormous heat generated. On the fore the end of the year, the French com- used a Pacificatoll for atmospherictesting, contrary, critics were convinced that portment was roundly denounced by the likewise estimated that ChristmasIsland cracks and faults were bound to appear, WHO, the ILO and the Twenty-Eighth could not support any undergroundtest- permittingradioactive substancesto leak UN General Assembly. ing, because of the porous characterof the out into the ocean or rise to the surface.
AMBIO, 1984 339 JUNE 1980
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- RESTRICTEDAREA
-_ PROHIBITEDAREA
Figure 3. This official CEP map from 1980 shows the fearful extent to which Moruroa has been damaged and contaminated by the nuclear weapons tests. The black dots mark the areas where 63 underground tests have been made since 1976. The intervals between the test pits rarely exceed 500 meters. The area marked "highly contaminated" on the north coast refers to the portion of the reef Impregnated with about 20 kilograms of plutonium (which has a half-life of 24 400 years). The thick black lines show the faults (flssures) caused by the tests. The hatched areas are off limits to all employees (except for the restricted corridor).
CONTINUINGDISASTERS pected weather changes in the Southern union. They therefore harbored the illu- Available reports by a few French and Hemisphere.Up to that year, cycloneshad sion that the new minister for Defense in foreign scientists who have been allowed been an extremely rare phenomenon in the socialist government which came to to visit Moruroabriefly in 1982 and 1983 French Polynesia. The last full-scale one power in May 1981, would be more willing (15, 14), although very sketchy, contain occurred in 1906. The French army en- to clean up the mess than his predecessors. enough data to show that the skeptics, un- gineers had therefore completely disre- When several months later, the minister fortunately,were right. For not only have garded this risk when they selected had still taken no action, the union bosses the tests regularlybeen accompaniedby Moruroain 1962, which, like most atolls, asked the independent French newspaper venting, leakage and seepage, but several is elevated only a few meters above sea Liberationto take up their cause, which it ugly accidentshave also occurred, during level. did (16, 17). The most chillingrevelations which enormous chunks of the outer wall It was thereforea most disagreeablesur- in their extremely well substantiatedac- of the atoll were torn out. The volume of prise for the 3000 servicemenstationed on cusation, reproduced by leading newspa- coral and rock pried loose by a 150 kiloton Moruroato hear over the radio at the end pers aroundthe world, were the following: bomb detonated on July 25, 1979, for in- of November 1980 that a cyclone had Right from the beginning, all sorts of stance, was estimated at one million cubic formednear the Equatorand was heading radioactive waste, like scrap metal, metersby Tazieff (15). Of course, on each in their direction.The waves stirredup by timber, tools and clothes, sometimes seal- occasion, huge quantitiesof radionuclides this cyclone were six to eight meters high ed in plastic bags or metal drums, had escaped through the gaping hole into the and it was only because the "islanders" simply been dumped on the reef on the ocean, where they were absorbed by fish could take refuge on the providentially- northside of the atoll. (The area is marked and plankton.Even worse, the underwater built platformsthat no lives were lost. zone tres dangereuse on the accompanying landslides sometimes generated tidal They had barely gatheredtheir wits and French army map). This dump eventually waves which raced through the Tuamotu scattered belongings, when another cy- covered an area of 30 000 square meters. Islands, destroying buildings and wharfs. clone hit Moruroa even more squarely, The amount of plutonium spilled over After the 1979 accident, instead of order- duringthe night between March11 and 12, the reef in the same area during the "se- ing a retreat to metropolitanFrance, the 1981. The havoc wroughton this occasion curity tests" in the late 1960s and early militaryhigh commanderected 23 refuge was particularlyserious on the north coast 1970s, and fixed in the roughest possible platforms, 4.5 meters high, on the reef and led to several startling revelations fashion by a layer of bitumen, amounted near the living quarters,which moreover aboutthe criminallynegligent way in which to almost twenty kilograms,enough to ex- were then surrounded by a two-meter- nuclearwaste had been dumped there for terminatethe whole populationof French high, protective concrete wall. years. Polynesia. As if all this were not enough, there Those who squealed loudest were the Incrediblyenough, the CEP high brass occurredfrom 1980 on, a series of unfore- Frenchtechnicians employed at Moruroa, had considered this open air storage per- seen, natural disasters, due to the unex- who belonged to the socialist CFDT trade fectly safe until the 1980and 1981cyclones
340 AMBIO VOL. 13 NO. 5-6 ripped off a huge portion of the the 50-70 kiloton range, but at least half a References and Notes plutonium-impregnated bitumen layer and dozen have been small prototypes of neu- 1. I Zander, R Areskog, Nuclear Explosions, swept the pieces, together with much of tron bombs. Obviously, the lagoon area 1945-72, plus several supplements (The Research the other "ordinary" nuclear waste, into too is of such limited size that these tests in Institute for National Defence, Stockholm, 1973). 2. Les Nouvelles de Tahiti. "Moruroa sera le site du the ocean. Before another, less reprehen- the central core of the atoll cannot go on C.E.P.", (March 29, 1963, Papeete). sible method of disposing of the remaining forever. As a matter of fact, a new base is 3. La Depeche de Tahiti, "Coco de l'atoll et poissons waste had been found, five more cyclones already being prepared on nearby Fan- du large pour le poisson cru de Moruroa", (June raced through this part of the Tuamotu gataufa so the endless testing program can 18, 1971, Papeete). 4. G E Roth et al, Fallout From Nuclear Weapons archipelago between January and May be continued when Moruroa finally col- Tests Conducted by France in the South Pacific 1983, and presumably completed the job lapses for good. from June to August 1971 (New Zealand National (18). Radiation Laboratory, Christchurch, 1972). 5. B Danielsson, M-T Danielsson, Moruroa, Mon Amour, (Melbourne and Auckland, 1977). (Also NO END IN SIGHT in French and Swedish). MOREWASTE In conclusion, there can be no doubt that 6. Bernard Salvat, "Importance de la faune malacologique dans les atolles polynesiens", There is still another serious waste dispos- the nuclear fallout engendered by the 41 Cahiers du Pacifique no 11, Paris, 1976. al problem at Moruroa, about which the atmospheric tests, made at Moruroa and 7. R Bagnis, Fish Poisoning in the South Pacific army engineers and technicians have had Fangataufa between 1966 and 1974, is still (South Pacific Commission, Noum6a, 1973). less to say, because they have not been as with us (mostly absorbed into our bodies), 8. T Yasumoto, Assignment Report on Ichthyosar- cotoxism in French Polynesia (World Health Or- directly affected themselves. This waste and that the 63 underground tests made ganization, Regional Office for the Western consists of the crushed corals and rocks since 1975, instead of diminishing the Pacific, 1976). taken up from the holes drilled in the reef, health hazards, have added several new 9. Mainichi Daily News, "Coral Reef Destruction at Turns Against Man in Form of Fish Poisoning", the bottom of which the bombs are det- sources of radioactive pollution. July 23, 1979, Tokyo. onated. The amount is about 1500 metric The only reports on radiation problems 10. H J Yeabsley et al, Environmental Radioactivity, tons per hole, and up to June 1984 more in Polynesia which the French government Annual Report for 1975 (New Zealand National than sixty such bomb shafts had been dril- has made public during this period are Radiation Laboratory, Christchurch, 1976). 11. New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs, French led. This means that roughly 90 000 metric those sent annually to the UN Scientific Nuclear Testing in the Pacific, International Court tons of partially polluted material must Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radi- of Justice New Zealand vs France (Wellington, have been dumped into either the lagoon ation (UNSCEAR) -which show mostly 1973). or the sea. Another intriguing question average fallout figures for ten 12. J Goldblat, French Nuclear Tests in the Atmos- day periods, phere, The Question of Legality (SIPRI publica- which has never received a satisfactory or for the whole year, and practically tions, Stockholm, 1974). answer, is where the technicians found all never the amounts measured on specific 13. D McTaggart, Greenpeace III, Journey Into the the sand needed for mixing the huge dates. Equally unsatisfactory is the way in Bomb (Greenpeace, London 1978). 14. H Atkinson et al, Report of a New Zealand, Austra- amounts of cement required to plug the which the samples of the flora and fauna lian and Papua New Guinea Scientific Mission to shafts. Could it have been dredged up in have been taken, for these as a rule come Moruroa Atoll (Mimeographed report published adjacent atolls? from the islands located farthest away by the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs, from Moruroa and of Wellington, 1984). More or less at the time when the first instead a precise 15. H Tazieff et al, Rapport sur l'ensemble de la mis- cyclone hit Moruroa, another limit had date, only the trimester is indicated! This sion scientifique en Polynesie frantcaise (Mimeo- also been reached: the base of the atoll is why the UNSCEAR members have reg- graphed report published by the French Ministry had been so badly damaged by all these ularly complained about the paucity of the of Defense, Paris, 1983). 16. CFDT, Section B-III, Contamination d Moruroa tests made at the periphery that the army data in these reports, which prevents them (typewritten report, Paris, October 19, 1981). engineers jokingly likened it to a Swiss from drawing any scientifically valid con- 17. F Berger, "La pollution nucl6aire a double dans cheese. The size of the cavities hollowed clusions. les trois derniers mois a Moruroa", Lib&ration, out in the basalt This is to November 6, 1981, Paris. foundation by the explo- nothing, however, compared 18. B Danielsson, M-T Danielsson, "No Flowers for sions was, of course, proportionate to the the total absence from these UNSCEAR the Visitors", Pacific Islands Monthly, June 1983. yield of each bomb. According to the most reports of any statistics showing the state 19. R T Butcovich, A E Lewis, Aids for Estimating reliable estimates (19) a 10 kiloton bomb of health of the 166 000 inhabitants of Effects of Underground Nuclear Explosions (Uni- versity of California Reports, Rev: 7, LA, 1978). creates a cavity, or rather a chimney, French Polynesia, who have been exposed 20. B Danielsson, M-T Danielsson, "Half-truth, Glar- which is 20 meters wide and 90 meters to all this radioactive fallout over a period ing Omissions, Downright Lies, Critics Claim", high, and the rock around it is fractured of eighteen years. Under heavy pressure Pacific Islands Monthly, August 1983. within a 150 meter radius. The from WHO, the territorial health 21. B Danielsson, M-T Danielsson, "Ambassador corres- depart- Puissant's Nuclear Fiction", Island Business, Oc- ponding figures for a 150 kiloton bomb are ment (which is also run by French army tober 1983, and B Danielsson, "French Polynesia, 55 by 220 and 400 meters (Figure 3). doctors) eventually published in 1983, Nuclear Colony", in: Politics in Polynesia (Univer- Then we must remember the diminutive some figures purporting to show that such sity of the South Pacific, Suva, 1983). size of Moruroa, and the fact that the radiation-induced diseases as leukemia northern half of it was covered with build- and thyroid cancer are practically non-ex- Bengt Danielsson holds a Ph D in an- ings and an airstrip, leaving only a 25 istent in Polynesia. These statistics were IIIIIEthropology from the University of kilometer long stretch of the south coast reassuring only because they were woeful- Uppsala and was Director of the for underground testing. The shafts sunk ly incomplete and in some respects even Swedish National Mueum of Ethnog- into the reef there had to be very closely faked (20, 21). raphy from 1967-71. Dr Danielsson spaced-with at most 500 meter intervals In order to find out the truth, the has spent most of his l.ife in the -which explains why the island was so Territorial Assembly has repeatedly tried Pacific, a region which he first became thoroughly perforated within the short to set up a commission of inquiry, com- aquainted with as a memeber of Thor period of four years. By 1980 some of the posed of civilian doctors, French and for- Heyerdahl's Kon-Tiki expedition in destruction was reflected on the surface by eign, to whom would be entrusted the task 1947. His most important field work vast depressions and faults several miles of making a thorough health survey of the was undertaken in the Tuamotu is- long (see Figure 3). population as a whole. All these attempts, lands in the 1950s, and the results It was thus high time to give up however, have always been vetoed or have been published in Work and Life Moruroa, and, if more tests were on the blocked by the French government. The II on Raroia,as well as in the Journal of books, to make them henceforth in the elected representatives of the Polynesian the Polynesian Society. Other an- Massif Central in France. Instead the CEP people are certainly justified in thinking, thropological books of wider scope high command chose to install a derrick on as they do, that the terrible secret the CEP .. and more public acclaim are: Love in a platform in the middle of the 40 meter bombers are trying to hide at any price is the South Seas and Tahiti autrefois. deep lagoon and started drilling there. simply that their nuclear tests at Moruroa, His six volume work Le memorial Since this new phase of the venture was like those of their American colleagues in polynesien is the first and still the initiated in 1981, more than ten bombs Micronesia and their British counterparts only history of French Polynesia. His have been detonated under the lagoon, at in Australia, have been greatly detrimen- address: BP 558, Papeete, Tahiti, depths varying between 800 and 1000 me- tal to the population and the environment French Polynesia. ters. Most of these explosions have been in in French Polynesia.
AMBIO, 1984 341