Safe? no way, says Greenpeace

THE ecological organisation

Greanpeace said radioactive elements were leaking from French underground nuclear testing sites in French Polynesia, and called for an independent probe. It called on the European Commission, executive arm of the European Community (EC), to back its demand for an independent study of the effects of nuclear testing at Moruroa and Fangataufa atolls.

Greanpeace official Jean-Luc Thierry

said; “The tests and the concealment must stop. The environmental conse quences of damage to the coral atolls (of Moruroa and Fangatau) and marine environment from France’s nuclear tests are far too serious to be hidden behind military secrecy.

Greanpeace said plankton samples it co u ectec j j n December in the ocean near the testing area contained cesium-134, w hich results from nuclear testing. It said this indicated radioactive contamination

from the testing site. But the organisation said it had been unable to obtain final proof because the French military had barred access to its military exclusion zone around Moruroa, and had arrested

five Greanpeace researchers venturing

inside it.

"Greanpeace is concerned that radioac tivity may already be leaking from the French underground nuclear tests at Moruroa and Fangataufa, despite official French assurances that no leakage wall occur for hundreds of years/ it said.

It said the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom), the EC’s nu

clear energy arm, had the legal right to demand French cooperation in an inde pendent investigation, and should en force this right. Greanpeace also released a copy of a letter to French Prime Minister Edith Crcsson, signed by 15 scientists, calling for an independent probe of what it called a “potentially grave environmental threat".

The scientists, from France, Britain, Germany, the United States, Japan, New Zealand and Fiji, rejected a recent French offer of an investigation by scientists at nuclear institutions because they said it lacked independence. □