Mururoa, Fangataufa

Nuclear experts end first impact survey on Mururoa, Fangataufa

Three French nuclear experts from the Commissariat a FEnergie Atomique (CEA, Atomic Energy Commission) ended, in early December, a one-month survey of the impact of nuclear testing on the French territory’s atolls of Mururoa and Fangataufa and Hao, daily newspaper La Depeche de Tahiti reported.

The survey was aimed at assessing radioactivity levels on the three atolls, after the French Centre d’Experimentation du Pacifique (CEP) ended its last campaign in 1996 and was later dismantled.

The researchers want to use the results to draw a radioactivity map of the sites.

Most of the surveys were made by air with a helicopter equipped with state-of the-art technology and sensors under a so called “Helinuc” scheme. Helinuc measure energy levels on the ground.

“This way we can determine which radioactivity can be considered as man made, including in the zones that can be suspected of contamination, and which is natural,” Claude Payen, who heads the

CEP’s follow-up studies department,

explained.

The research is only the first phase of the “Turbo 1” campaign, that during one month took some eight to ten tonnes in samples of sea water, “from the surface down to 900 metres deep.”

The dozen of scientists who took part in the mission also took samples of rain water, sediments, plankton, shrimps and sea cucumbers on the ground, at sea and on the reef. “In fact, we have taken

samples of biological elements throughout

the food chain in the lagoon and the ocean, from the plankton to the fish,”

The CEP follow-up department is to operate for the next 15 years.

“But this doesn’t mean that in fifteen years, there will be no more controls.”

The results of the Turbo 1 campaign are to be made public in June, 2000.

“It will be largely publicised, probably

even posted on to the Internet,” Payen said. (PINA Nius Online) ■