Moruroa report:

A futile exercise

The Moruroa report of Austra lian, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea scientists (PIM Sep p 66) clearly establishes only one thing; its own utter futility.

To begin with, the mission was made up in such a way two radiation experts from New Zealand, a marine geologist and an environmental scientist from Australia, and a biologist from PNG that it was unable to throw light upon the really crucial problem. This is not to find out to what extent Moruroa has been damaged and con taminated by more than 100 bomb tests. It is to determine the state of health of the 166,000 inhabitants of all the other islands in French Polynesia.

Following the repeated fail ure of efforts by our local parliament (made up of 30 elected representatives of the Polynesian people) to have a thorough health survey carried out by a mixed team of French and foreign doctors, the Austra lian and New Zealand branches of the International Association of Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War wrote to their respective governments well in advance urging them to have medical doctors included in the team to go to Moruroa. This was refused by the French Government.

As the “Diary of Events” appearing as an appendix to the report shows, the five non medical scientists who were finally graciously allowed to visit Moruroa for four days, spent most of their time talking, atten ding lectures, luncheons and dinners, and inspecting military installations.

Except for a quick early mor ning trip around the island by air they spent the whole of the first day in discussions.

The second day was taken up with visits to various labor atories and hospitals until 3.30 pm, when they carefully in spected an object which cannot have been entirely unfamiliar to them a drilling rig of the type used in oil exploration all over the world.

After finishing dinner at 8.30 pm they talked presumably until late into the night about the weighty matter of “the formation and structure of an atoll.”

Only on the third day from 1 pm onwards did they get down to anything as practical as sample-taking. Then they pack ed in the evening.

On the fourth day they vi sited an abandoned, sealed, underground test site. They then caught the plane back to Tahiti for a few more days of courtesy visits, luncheons, din-

ners and discussions.

But even with all these extra curricular activities, it seems to us that the visitors should still have been able to come up with at least some useful information about two particularly serious types of nuclear pollution which have demonstrably occured.

The first is the possible ven ting, seepage and leakage of radio-active materials into the air and the ocean. The best way to ascertain risks in this regard would have been for the team to observe and monitor a test of the usual 10-70-kilotonnes yield. This is what was asked for by Haroun Tazieff, who headed a similar French inspection of Moruroa in 1982. What he got instead as he relates in his semi-official report, which has

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Marie-Thérèse and Bengt Danielsson

had only a restricted circulation was a test with a yield of less than one kilotonne the smal lest ever, and so small as to exclude any meaningful observations. Tazieff also re gretted that the French navy did not supply a submarine from which he could inspect the holes tom out by nuclear blasts in the outer wall of the atoll at a depth of 600-700 metres.

One of these blasts prised loose about a million cubic metres of coral and rock, accor ding to his own estimate.

The recent report does not say whether the team had asked their hosts in advance to blow up a bomb for their benefit. But the fact is it wasn’t done. Nor was any submarine made available to them, although one well equipped for this type of research was cruis ing in Pacific waters at the time (PIM Mar p 24).

So nothing could be learned about possible venting, seep age, and leakage. The three chapters devoted to these prob lems are therefore purely speculative.

The second pollution prob lem is easier to localise and study because it figured prom inently in newspapers and magazines throughout the world, including PIM (Jan ’B2 p2O), during the months follow ing the Socialists’ win in the May, 1981 French elections.

At the heart of the fuss was a complaint about lax safety stan dards at Moruroa by French technicians employed by the army to prepare the tests.

When the new Defence Minister Charles Hernu took no action, the technicians leaked their story to the press. Their main revelations were that through criminal negligence huge amounts of radio-active waste, including between 10 and 20 kilograms of lethal plu tonium, had simply been dumped and left on the reef, in the area between the pass and the airstrip, on the north coast of Moruroa. When the island was washed over by big waves stirred up by the two cyclones of November 28, 1980, and March 11, 1981, much was spread over Moruroa, or carried off to distant shores. Under heavy pressure from the French Parliament, Hernu eventually admitted the accuracy of the report.

It should have been easy for the Australian-NZ-PNG team to check how serious the remaining pollution in this area was at the end of 1983. All they needed to do was to make the 15-minute trip from their living quarters to the so-called “safety trial area” on the north coast, They were not permitted to do this. They were not even allowed to collect coral specimens from the lagoon which occupies 90 per cent of the atoll area. In the published report

this major restriction was dismissed in the following, apparently unconcerned manner: “As the Mission was not permitted to sample sediments from the lagoon nor take any types of sample from the safety trial area, this avenue of verification was denied.”

Instead of protesting in the strongest possible way by flying straight back home, the visitors spent the day meekly taking surface samples of ocean water.

Sure enough, it was not badly

contaminated, as the last, small, bomb blast had taken place three months before at a depth of 800 metres, If the team members had limited their remarks to such subjects as radiation, venting, leakage and waste disposal, on which they were more or less expert, our only criticism would be that they have not contri buted any new information or insight.

Marie-Thérèse and Bengt Danielsson.