New study on nuclear testing in French Polynesia reveals Frances censorship and secrecy – The World

Its been nearly two decades since France stopped testing nuclear weapons in French Polynesia.

But many across French Polynesias 118 islands and atolls across the central South Pacific were disappointed last month when President Emmanuel Macron, on his very first trip to the territory France has controlled since 1842, failed to apologize for the nearly 200 nuclear tests conducted between 1966 and 1996.

Faced with dangerous powers in the concert of nations, I wish to say here that the nation owes a debt to French Polynesia, Macron said in a July 27 speech. He went on to admitthat the tests on the Mururoa and Fangataufa atolls were not clean in any way but stopped short of an official apology.

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Guillaume Colombini, who works for Radio Te Reo-o-Tefana, saidwhile they werent expecting an apology, it was still devastating not to get one.

So, when you do something wrong, whatever it is, if you go and see the people you have hurt and you say, Listen, Im sorry for what Ive done, said Colombini, it is easier for the community to say, OK, we accept, heres forgiveness, or No, we dont accept. You have to do something for us.

Colombini, 41, grew up in Tahiti during the last decades of the nuclear tests and said he remembers seeing images of blue lagoons turning white after bombs were set off. He can recount the hyper-polarization of the issue and the anti-nuclear demonstrations spurred across the Pacific.

Although testing stopped more than two decades ago, its legacy lives on in French Polynesias politics, health, economy and environment, he said.

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Scientists have long estimated some 110,000 people were affected by the radioactive fallout many of them French Polynesians who worked at the testing sites. However, a study released earlier this year revealed that France underestimated the level of toxic exposure during the atmospheric tests that took place in the 1960s and 70s.

The Mururoa Fileswas based on a two-year investigation of more than 2,000 declassified French state documents as well as various interviews conducted in French Polynesia.

We found that they underestimated the level of [nuclear] exposure by factors of two to 10..."

We found that they underestimated the level of exposure by factors of two to 10, depending on the tests and locations, said Sebastien Philippe, a researcher and lecturer at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs with the program on science and global security and co-author of the study.

Thats two to 10 times higher than the estimates given by Frances Atomic Energy Commission in a report produced nearly a decade after testing stopped. The findings compiled by Philippe and his team found, among other things, that one reason the estimates of radiation exposure were so low is that France did not take into account contaminated drinking water.

Ultimately, this systematic underestimation not only made it more difficult to link cases of cancer to the nuclear tests, but it also made it harder for victims to get compensated.

The compensation process was scientifically broken..."

The compensation process was scientifically broken, and I think the reason for that is the government really realized how much money it was going to cost them, and decided it would be easier to deal with this in court, Philippe said.

More than 400 claims have been filed against the French government, but only about half have been settled in the last 10 years. Philippe said this was allowed to happen because of the French governments censorship and secrecy surrounding the nuclear testing.

One upside of the release of this study, he said, was the French governments commitment to open more government archives to the public a commitment that President Macron made on his recent trip. The French government did not respond to The Worlds request for comment about Marcons trip.

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The underestimation of the radioactive fallout also made it difficult to fully understand the scope of irreversible environmental damage from the nuclear testing.

Keitapu Maamaatuaiahutapu, a physicist and climate scientist at the University of French Polynesia, said the destruction was particularly bad when the testing went underground in the mid-70s and bombs were set off in boreholes drilled into the atolls.

These bombs had power 100 to 1,000 times more than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, he said.

Whole lagoons full of coral were decimated and fish populations were poisoned for years. Now, theres also a concern that the atolls may break apart a process being sped up by rising ocean levels due to climate change, he said.

And the release of the radioactivity from those holes, not only would that create [a] tsunami, but it would pollute the ocean.

And the release of the radioactivity from those holes, Maamaatuaiahutapu said. Not only would that create [a] tsunami, but it would pollute the ocean.

France continues to control all of the information about the damage caused by nuclear testing, including heavily guarding the test sites themselves, he said, so there might not be a way to tell when something might happen. Both the Mururoa and Fangataufa atolls are more than 700 miles away from the main island of Tahiti.

Maamaatuaiahutapu also said that he doesn't believe that French Polynesia will never get an official apology from Paris, and that also creates political problems.

Experts saidthat French Polynesians who are loyal to France dont want to criticize Paris, because it supports the territory with some $2 billion a year.

On the other hand, the independent movement, which both Maamaatuaiahutapu and Colombini are part of, supports every effort to hold France accountable, and to spread the word about nuclear tests across the Pacific a place known mostly for its beauty.

"If you look beyond [the postcard], theres something you cannot even imagine.

In every other Pacific Island, you have the same, said Colombini, who also spent more than a decade working in French Polynesias tourism sector. You have the postcard, but if you look beyond that, theres something you cannot even imagine.

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New study on nuclear testing in French Polynesia reveals Frances censorship and secrecy - The World