France 'concealed devastation' of nuclear tests in French Polynesia

France has hidden the devastating impacts of its nuclear tests in French Polynesia during the 1960s and 1970s, a study of declassified Defence Ministry documents found. 

France's nuclear test on Mururoa Atoll, French Polynesia, in 1971. AFP PHOTO

Published on Tuesday, the report is the result of a collaboration between journalists from the French news site Disclose, and researchers from Princeton University and the British group Interprt.

More than 2,000 pages of the so-called "Mururoa Files" were analysed, and dozens of people interviewed in both France and French Polynesia.

The team was able to reconstruct the radiation effects of three major nuclear tests: Aldébaran in 1966, Encelade in 1971, and Centaure in 1974.

@Disclose_ngo et @interprt, avec l’université de Princeton, ont enquêté pendant deux ans sur les essais nucléaires français dans le Pacifique. Notre enquête dévoile les mensonges et dissimulations de l'Etat sur la contamination de la Polynésie française. https://t.co/CzD94lOl7P

— Disclose (@Disclose_ngo) March 9, 2021

After combing through maps, photographs and other data, they found radiation levels to be 2 to 10 times higher than those estimated by France’s Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) in 2006.

“The state has done its best to bury the toxic legacy of these tests,” Disclose editor Geoffrey Livolsi told British newspaper the Guardian.

“This is the first truly independent scientific effort to measure the extent of the damage and recognise the thousands of victims of France's nuclear experiment in the Pacific.”

Aerial view of French Polynesia gettyimages

'Thousands more' victims

The survey found that almost the almost the entire Polynesian population at the time – 110,000 people – had been hit with radiation by the Centaure bomb of July 1974. 

France had underestimated nuclear contamination from that test by as much as 40 percent in Tahiti, the researchers said, adding that authorities had “concealed the true impact of nuclear testing on the health of Polynesians for more than 50 years”.

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The team also sited a confidential report from the Polynesian Ministry of Health showing that some 11,000 victims received radiation doses in excess of 5 millisieverts – five times the level required to qualify for compensation.

The victims included 600 children under the age of 15 living in the Gambier Islands, Tureia and Tahiti.

Decades of testing

France carried out 193 nuclear tests between 1960 and 1996, mostly on the atolls of Fangataufa and Mururoa. 

At least 41 tests were conducted in the atmosphere instead of below the water level, with radioactive fallout from plutonium covering the entire French Polynesian territory.

The tug-of-war between Paris and the Polynesians over compensation for nuclear tests has continued for decades. So far, 63 Polynesian civilians have been compensated.