France, Despite Wide Protests, Explodes a Nuclear Device
By PHILIP SHENON
Published: September 6, 1995
PAPEETE, Tahiti, Sept. 5— France detonated a nuclear device buried deep beneath a remote coral-ringed atoll today, the first of a planned series of tests in the South Pacific that have brought condemnation from foreign governments and environmental groups.
The explosion at Mururoa Atoll, about 750 miles southeast of the French-administered island of Tahiti, was carried out at 12:30 P.M. in Mururoa and was detected within minutes by seismic monitoring stations as far away as Australia.
While the French have provided few details on the type of weapons now being tested in the South Pacific, the Defense Ministry said in a statement released in Paris that today's blast had the force of less than 20,000 tons of TNT. By comparison, the American atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima 50 years ago had the force of about 15,000 tons.
The French Government has said that it will carry out several tests from September through May, when it will renounce nuclear testing forever and sign a comprehensive global test-ban treaty.
The tests were ordered by President Jacques Chirac shortly after he took office last spring. He has insisted that the tests are necessary to guarantee the accuracy of a new generation of nuclear warheads and to perfect computer simulation techniques that would end the need for further testing.
Mr. Chirac's decision to resume the tests in the South Pacific -- three years after his predecessor, Francois Mitterrand, placed a moratorium on nuclear testing -- drew criticism from the United States and other nuclear powers that have ended their own testing programs.
The worldwide protests have had some impact in Paris judging by comments today from President Chirac, who said that he might cut short the testing program.
"If we have the information we need to change over to simulation before the eight tests," he said in a television interview in Paris, "I will stop the blasts since my objective is not to carry out eight tests." France had originally planned to carry out seven or eight tests.
Among the other nuclear powers, only China continues to carry out testing of large nuclear devices, although its testing program has drawn notably less emotional protest from foreign governments and antinuclear campaigners since the Chinese, unlike the French, carry out their tests on their own soil. Mururoa Atoll is more than 10,000 miles from the French mainland.
Mr. Chirac's suggestion today that he might cut short the testing program appeared to do little to placate South Pacific leaders, who have been outspoken in their criticism.
"France is flying in the face of world opinion," Prime Minister Jim Bolger of New Zealand said today after learning of the first blast.
Foreign Minister Gareth Evans of Australia, which has withdrawn its Ambassador from France, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that the test "increases not only the dangers in a fragile marine environment in the South Pacific, but it's a blow to our hopes for achieving a nuclear free world." He added, "This is not the action of a good international citizen."
Across the South Pacific and Asia, there have been waves of protests against the resumption of French testing, with tens of thousands of people joining in demonstrations in Australia, New Zealand and Japan.
French products are being boycotted across Asia and the Pacific, with sales of French wine down by nearly a third in major Australian cities. The French honorary consulate in the Australian city of Perth was firebombed in June.
A flotilla of nearly 25 protest ships, ranging from an unarmed New Zealand naval research ship to a ceremonial canoe from the Cook Islands, have ringed Mururoa.
The flotilla had been led by the Rainbow Warrior II, a ship owned by the environmental group Greenpeace. The ship's predecessor, Rainbow Warrior, was blown up by French secret agents in a New Zealand harbor in 1985, killing one crewmember, as it prepared to lead a protest to Mururoa during an earlier round of tests.
But last week, the Rainbow Warrior II and its sister ship, the Greenpeace, were seized by French naval commandos as the protest vessels moved toward the exclusion zone. The French also apprehended two Greenpeace divers who used inflatable dinghies to pierce the 12-mile exclusion zone and hid themselves at a test rig.
The Government insists that nearly 30 years of nuclear testing at Mururoa, which is composed mostly of basalt, a hard volcanic rock, proves that the testing is safe. The French say that the basalt prevents the radioactivity from leaking into the sea.
The first tests at Mururoa and another neighboring atoll, Fangataufa, were held in 1966. Today's explosion was the 176th at the two atolls.
Scientists from other nations are not convinced of the safety of the tests. There have long been reports of radiation-related illness among residents of neighboring island chains. If the French followed earlier practice at Mururoa, the nuclear device was inserted into a steel tube and lowered by crane to the bottom of a shaft nearly half a mile deep within the atoll.
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