Tens of millions of euros have been spent by France’s Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) to refute studies that show Paris has continuously understated the catastrophic effects of its nuclear experiments in French Polynesia throughout the 1960s and 1970s.
Documents indicate that the CEA launched a coordinated effort to undermine the disclosures only days before a parliamentary investigation delivered its findings on the testing.
Based on 2,000 porters of declassified material and dozens of discussions, the 2021 book Toxique examined only six of the 193 nuclear tests conducted by France at the Moruroa and Fangataufa atolls between 1966 and 1996 and came to the conclusion that they contaminated far more people than France has ever admitted.
Recent records indicate that one year following the book’s release, the CEA issued 5,000 manuscripts of its own booklet – called “Nuclear tests in French Polynesia: why, how and with what consequences?” – and circulated them all around the islands.
A four-person delegation was also flown by the commission in business class to French Polynesia, where they stayed at the Hilton hotel, to meet local leaders and do interviews with the media as part of an operation that cost over €90,000.
President Emmanuel Macron visited French Polynesia after the journal of Toxique, which was founded on exploration by Princeton University’s science and global security program Disclose and an environmental justice research collective called Interpret. French president acknowledged Paris’s debt to the area.
According to the scientific study, 110,000 individuals who live in Tahiti and the adjacent islands may have been exposed to enough radiation in a single 1974 test to be eligible for compensation if they went on to develop one of 23 distinct cancers.
Less than half of the 2,846 compensation applications filed by 2023 had ever been found valid, according to Toxique, who said the CEA had long understated the radiation levels involved, thus restricting the number of people eligible for reimbursement.
The parliamentary investigation into the social, economic, and environmental effects of the tests—as well as whether France intentionally hid the level of contamination—has so far questioned over 40 lawmakers, military officials, scientists, and victims. It is expected to conclude by the end of May.
This is untrue, according to CEA/DAM, the military branch of the CEA that invented the atomic bomb in France. However, since then, the ASNR, France’s nuclear safety agency, has admitted to “uncertainties associated with [the CEA’s] calculations” and told the parliamentary investigation that it was difficult to demonstrate that individuals got radiation doses below the compensation level.
“The booklet’s objective was to give Polynesians in particular the elements to understand”
the exams and their implications, the CEA stated in a statement. According to the statement, the booklet used “the necessary scientific rigour”
to provide a
“factual and transparent explanation” of “the health and environmental consequences of the tests.”
Before the testing program was transferred underground in 1974, the local populace, site workers, and French military stationed in Polynesia at the time were exposed to significant amounts of radiation from 46 of France’s atmospheric nuclear tests.
Leukemia and lymphoma, as well as thyroid, breast, and lung malignancies, are common across the islands due to radiation exposure. According to the French army, up to 2,000 soldiers may have received enough radiation exposure to develop cancer.
