TL: FRENCH NUCLEAR TESTING IN THE 1990S - THE EUROPEAN CONNECTION SO: Stephanie Mills, Greenpeace International (GP) DT: February 28, 1992 Keywords: MILITARY GREENPEACE NUCLEAR WEAPONS TESTING PACIFIC FRANCE / The international community now faces a historic opportunity: to chose between nuclear disarmament and protection of the environment through new mechanisms of common security, or to continue with the nuclear arms race, the threat of nuclear proliferation and a deepening environmental and financial crisis. The dramatic change in the security map of Europe and the world has resulted in much discussion about the future of nuclear weapons in the new Europe. President Mitterrand's recent suggestion that French nuclear weapons might become the basis for a new European nuclear doctrine - essentially replacing the American nuclear weapons withdrawn from Europe - has created controversy, not only from those who in France have promoted the Gaullist policy of an independent force de frappe. In the post Cold-War situation, deterrence is clearly more than ever an unworkable doctrine. President Mitterrand's suggestion tacitly underlines the fact that the very nature of the French nuclear force, the threat it was supposed to face, and the strategy it was supposed to serve, is obsolete. If French nuclear weapons did form part of a comprehensive European security framework, Moruroa and Fangataufa - France's nuclear test sites in the South Pacific - would effectively become Europe's test sites. Among the warheads tested there are those for the new air-launched missile which may well end up as a Franco-British joint venture. Given the dramatic changes in Europe, there are several key questions that need to be asked. Is France seriously contemplating giving control of its nuclear force to a European-wide body ? If so, where will these weapons be targeted ? If not, what is the alternative security vision which France might promote ? Greenpeace's Position Greenpeace believes that French nuclear weapons have no real purpose, and that continuing to test new generations of multiple armed warheads is financially costly, environmentally damaging and politically and militarily meaningless. Like the Maginot Line, France's nuclear weapons are useless when it comes to dealing with real threats to the security of Europe and the world, as the Gulf War showed. France would be better off joining the moratorium on testing implemented by the Commonwealth of Independent States, and negotiating a comprehensive test ban treaty. This move would also meet significant public support in France. In a 1988 opinion poll, 50 percent of the French public agreed nuclear weapons testing should stop, while only 30 percent thought it should continue.(1) Because of the dangers of nuclear proliferation, Greenpeace believes it is the responsibility and obligation of the current nuclear weapons states to strip nuclear weapons of their over- burdened weight as status symbols. Rather than continuing to upgrade their nuclear weapons, France and others should be sending a message to would-be proliferators that nuclear weapons are in reality strategically redundant and politically clumsy tools of mass destruction. They do not prevent conflicts, enhance security or endow great power status. Greenpeace believes that for the new Europe, questions of economic, political and environmental security will be far more important than military security. As it took the lead in promoting a world park for Antarctica, France could lead Europe in promoting nuclear-free security and new mechanisms for stability which build on confidence and co-operation both within Europe and between the North and the South. France has a choice: to lead the way towards a nuclear-free future, or to remain isolated in the past, desperately seeking a new rationale for old weapons. MORUROA AND FANGATAUFA - FRANCE's NUCLEAR TEST SITES (map) Where does France test its nuclear weapons? France's nuclear test site in the South Pacific is at the coral atolls of Moruroa and Fangataufa in French Polynesia. Forty four atmospheric tests and 130 underground tests have taken place there under the direction of the Commissariat a l'Energie Atomique. Greenpeace is campaigning for an international treaty banning nuclear tests wherever they take place. However, its campaign to end testing in French Polynesia is particularly urgent because France is the only country testing in a marine environment under fragile coral atolls. This has caused fracturing and fissuring of the atoll, and there are fears that radioactivity is already leaking into the marine environment. Continued testing threatens the already damaged geology of the atolls, and could lead to radioactivity from more than 130 tests leaking into the Pacific Ocean. While the French authorities deny that any leakage will occur for thousands of years, independent scientists agree that it is likely that leakage is already taking place. What is being tested at Moruroa? France is developing a new range of new nuclear weapons for the late 1990s and early 21st century, for use on land, air and sea. A. Sea-based nuclear weapons France is developing the Triomphant submarine class to replace its Redoutable class nuclear-armed submarines. Six Triomphant submarines are being built at Cherbourg; the first is due to be launched in 1994. These submarines are the French equivalent to the US and UK Trident class; that is, they are to be armed with strategic long-range missiles,each carrying multiple nuclear warheads. Each submarine will be armed with 16 M45 missiles; each missile will carry 6 TN75 warheads. An upgrade of the M45 missile, the M5, is being planned for deployment after the year 2000. These missiles will carry 12 warheads each, called TN76s. It is these warheads - the TN75 and the TN76 -which are currently being tested at Moruroa. Each new type of warhead takes up to 20 tests to refine it. The cost of one test is FF509 million. B. Land-based nuclear weapons Moruroa is also the testing site for warheads for the Hades missile, a land-based missile with a range of 350 kilometres. President Mitterrand has cut the number of Hades from 90 to 30 missiles, and said that they will be stockpiled, not deployed, because of concern that their only targets will be in the former Eastern European countries and Germany. The Hades warhead being tested at Moruroa is the TN90. The estimated cost of Hades warheads is around US$2.4 billion, or approximately US$1 million per warhead.(2) C. Air-based nuclear weapons A new air-to-surface missile the Air-Sol Longue Portee, is being developed, along with a new warhead. This warhead is likely being tested at Moruroa at the moment, and will either be an upgraded version of the TN81 warhead, or a completely new warhead. Where are French nuclear weapons targeted? In 1990, the target for the new M45 sea-based nuclear missile was given as Moscow and the major cities of the former Soviet Union, as well as military and civilian targets in former Eastern Europe.(3) In February 1992, in response to a public question about where new French weapons were targeted, a French government official said: "I am not sure.. It is a difficult question....We will have to get our Defence Minister to think about that."(4) What does France's nuclear testing programme cost? A. Financially The official cost of running the nuclear testing programme in 1989 was given as FF 4,072 million, or FF509 million per test. (5) However, this figures does not represent the total cost of producing new nuclear weapons. In 1989, the Commissariat a L'Energie Atomique had a budget for military purposes of FF10,110 million (50 percent of its total budget). According to official figures, the military nuclear budget in 1989 was 17.29 percent of the total defence budget, a cost of FF31,528 million. However, independent defence analysts have estimated the real figures - including both operations and facilities costs - for 1989 at FF42,827 million, or 22.6 percent of the total defence budget. (6) B. Politically The political costs to France of continued testing in the Pacific are high. France's atmospheric testing programme was condemned by the World Court; the South Pacific Forum of Pacific Island States has repeatedly called for an end to testing. France has also been isolated within the Pacific region because of its refusal to sign the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone Treaty of Rarotonga, and because of its reservations about radioactive waste contamination in its signing of the Noumea Convention, the regional environment protection treaty. France's record at Moruroa has also been heavily criticised in the United Nations, the European Parliament and in the US Congress, which last year held hearings calling for closure of the Pacific site. C. Human health An independent health study of the people of French Polynesia has never been undertaken, and military health records of personnel from the site have not been released. No follow-up programme has been undertaken to monitor workers once they have left the site. In 1963, the French Governor of Tahiti, M Grimald, claimed: "Not a single particle of radioactive fallout will ever reach an inhabited island." But immediately after the first tests, radiation was detected as far away as Samoa, Fiji and New Zealand. The arrogance and bad faith with which the authorities have treated the people of French Polynesia is reflected in the attitude of the same institutions today which continue to deny the testing programme causes any environmental damage. Testimonies from victims published by Greenpeace suggest that higher than normal numbers of cancers, birth abnormalities and other illnesses have been experienced by people in French Polynesia since the testing programme began.(7) In contrast, the United States government in 1990 established a $100 million compensation fund for victims of radiation-induced illnesses caused by US nuclear testing. An accounting of the cost of the testing programme would be incomplete without the tragic costs to human health factored into it. D. Environmentally A recent modelling study by two Australian scientists has indicated that if major leakage of radioactivity occured from Moruroa and Fangataufa, either through a single discharge or through constant release, the entire marine environment of French Polynesia would be contaminated. In a worst case scenario, the marine environment of most South Pacific countries would be contaminated; radiation at above normal levels would be found as far away as northwest of New Zealand.(8) The environmental safety of the testing programme at Moruroa is subject to much controversy. Greenpeace believes the precautionary principle - that action must be taken before the existence of possible serious harm to the environment is demonstrated - is the only realistic approach to human interaction with our environment. Several scientific missions have raised serious questions about the safety of testing at Moruroa. In 1990, a Greenpeace team found artificial radioactivity in plankton outside the 12 mile military exclusion zone around Moruroa. In 1987, Commandant Cousteau found short-lived radionuclides such as cesium 134 and iodine 131 in the Moruroa lagoon, indicating leakage from the tests was already occuring. His team filmed dramatic footage of underwater fissures in the atoll. In 1983, the Atkinson Mission found elevated levels of tritium, severe fissuring of the atoll and subsidence of more than one metre in parts of the atoll. In 1981, Haroun Tazieff issued a warning about the geological stability of the atoll in the long-term if nuclear weapons testing continued. In 1991, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the Vienna-based UN agency founded to "increase and accelerate" the use of nuclear energy in the world, found elevated levels of plutonium in samples taken 12 miles from Moruroa. By comparison, the US Environmental Protection Agency has called for those planning radioactive waste dumps to study the possibility of leakage over a 10,000 year period. No such study has been published about Moruroa, which is effectively a high level radioactive waste dump, containing several Chernobyls worth of radioactivity which is toxic for thousands of years. While the siting of nuclear waste dumps has created serious and legitimate public controversy in metropolitan France, the CEA continues to use the Pacific atolls of Moruroa and Fangataufa - water permeable environments which would never meet the criteria for civilian waste disposal sites - as a test site for nuclear weapons. Finally, the development and production of new nuclear weapons also creates environmental contamination and radioactive waste in France. Greenpeace's Position 1. France should join the moratorium on nuclear testing implemented by the Commonwealth of Independent States, and actively encourage other nuclear weapons states to do likewise. As a sign of good faith, France should also sign the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty banning atmospheric tests, and begin negotiating an international and verifiable comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty. France should sign and/or ratify without reservation all major international and regional treaties relating to nuclear testing and nuclear proliferation, such as the Non Proliferation Treaty, the Treaty of Tlatelolco, the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone Treaty of Rarotonga and the Noumea Convention. It should abide by, and respect, votes in the United Nations calling for a comprehensive test ban treaty. 2. France's nuclear test sites at Moruroa and Fangataufa should be closed down, and alternative strategies identified and implemented to develop the economy of French Polynesia. 3. France should allow unrestricted access for bona fide international and independent assessment of the health and environmental impacts of its nuclear testing programme, and provide fair compensation to the people of French Polynesia. Footnotes: 1. Omniplus Survey; Brule Ville Associes, July 1988, commissioned by Greenpeace. 2. Jane's Defence Weekly, 25 March 1989. 3. SIPRI Year Book 1990; Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, p 42. 4. Ambassdor Gabriel de Bellescize, unpublished address to the Asia-Pacific Conference on Peace and Security, Christchurch, New Zealand, 4 February 1992. 5. Reply from Ministry of Defence to the Assemble Nationale, November 26, 1990. 6. Guide des forces nucleaires francaise, by Bruno Barrillot; Damocles, p 4. 7. Testimonies, Greenpeace/Damocles; available from Greenpeace offices. 8. French Nuclear Weapon Testing: An Environmental Impact Study, by J. Ribbe and M. Tomczak; Marine Pollution Bulletin, Volume 21, No 11, p 536-542, 1990. Keywords: greenpeace nuclear europe gp france weapons testing pacific links policy south pacific protests / ----------=END=