Critics of French nuclear test vindicated by lastest study

["Sandy Perle" <sandyfl@earthlink.net>]

I posted this last night to my nuclear related news membership. 
Perhaps Franz will elaborate more, in that he has been involved in 
the original study, and obviously does NOT agree with Greenpeace 
on their lastest statements.

Critics of French nuclear test vindicated by lastest study  

WELLINGTON, Feb 21 (AFP) - A French study reporting serious 
radioactive leakage at the former French nuclear test sites of 
Mururoa and Fangataufa atolls in the South Pacific vindicates 
Greenpeace's opposition to the tests, Greenpeace New Zealand 
said Sunday. The new report by the French Independent Research 
and  Information Commission on Radioactivity (CRII-RAD) said 
radiation was leaking into underground water, lagoons and the 
ocean. It also highlighted flaws in a study last year which said 
radiation levels were nearly undetectable, Greenpeace spokesman 
Michael Szabo said in a statement. The 1998 study was by the 
International Atomic Energy Agency  (IAEA), which Szabo said 
"played a significant role in the cover-up of the 1986 Chernobyl 
nuclear disaster''. The 2000-page IAEA report said the tests had 
had "no  radiological health effects" and little significant 
environmental impact on the Fangataufa and Mururoa atolls. But 
the CRII-RAD report said radioactivity was 94 and 371 times  above 
the level required for the sites to be maintained under surveillance, 
adding that the radioactivity was leaking into the water table, 
lagoons and ocean. The CRII-RAD's experts published scenarios 
based on plutonium  contamination of the atolls' northern zones, 
warning that a danger existed of involuntary ingestion of 
contaminated soil, by children playing in sand for example, or of 
breathing microscopic particles. The French government has 
responded to the new report by  re-issuing the IAEA study. But 
Greenpeace said the new French study, led by Dr Michele  Rivasi, 
reinforced the need for a comprehensive independent study of the 
sites. It confirmed that Mururoa and Fangataufa were "leaky 
underwater  nuclear waste dumps". Szabo said if the atolls were 
civil nuclear waste storage sites  in metropolitan France they would 
be classified and managed as high level waste storage areas. "In 
1996 French authorities announced they would send a team to visit 
Mururoa once a year to check for contamination. This is 
inadequate. Surveillance should be year round and under the 
auspices of an independent body ... rather than the French nuclear 
authorities,'' he said. Greenpeace had called on the French 
government to pay for a  clean-up of the atolls as well as 
compensation for workers who spent time at the test sites and 
indigenous Maohi communities in eastern Polynesia. A scientist at 
the Auckland Institute of Technology, Richard  Anstiss, said 
Sunday there needed to be free access to the atolls by 
international, independent scientists. "The French have nothing to 
fear from such an investigation,''  he said on National Radio. Over a 
30-year period, from July 1966 to January 1996, France  carried out 
193 atmospheric and underground tests in the area. They were 
finally halted by President Jacques Chirac after increasing protests 
by several Pacific and Asian countries, notably New Zealand, 
Australia, Japan and Indonesia.

Sandy Perle
E-Mail: sandyfl@earthlink.net 
Personal Website: http://www.geocities.com/capecanaveral/1205

"The object of opening the mind, as of opening 
the mouth, is to close it again on something solid"
              - G. K. Chesterton -
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