French nuclear tests

Last week’s nuclear explosion beneath a quiet atoll 3,200 miles southeast of Hawaii should not discourage the international community from maintaining pressure on France to end nuclear testing.

Back in June, President Jacques Chirac revealed that his government planned a series of eight detonations under Muroroa, French-controlled territory in the South Pacific. The rationale: French scientists can create computer simulations of the blasts, making future tests unnecessary.

Reaction to the announcement was uniformly negative, for two reasons.

Environmental groups contend the tests threaten life forms all the way up the food chain, to humans. They are concerned about leakage of radioactivity into the air and water. Some worry about the explosions triggering seismic reactions — earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.

During the 1960s and early 1970s, France conducted 41 atmospheric nuclear tests in that region before moving exclusively underground in 1975. Research on the impact of the subterranean explosions on the surrounding ocean, vegetation and animal species — environmental superstar Jacques Cousteau performed one of the studies — produced inconclusive results.

Although nuclear poisoning of the environment as a result of France’s future underground tests is worrisome, there is no evidence it has occurred. The more realistic concern is that continued testing, especially by one of the earliest and most influential members of the nuclear club, sets a bad example and is politically damaging to global efforts to end atomic weapons testing and proliferation of nuclear weapons.

Nuclear weapons served a useful purpose in Europe. They gave the West a first-strike capability to counter the threat of armored attack by the Soviet Union and its satellites. Vital national interests in the 1990s are threatened most by renegade states, such as Iraq or Iran, by historic ethnic flashpoints in places like Bosnia, and by domestic terrorism.

France’s argument for continuing the program is as hollow as the hole in the ground under Muroroa. Testing is necessary, explains the French defense ministry, because, “The nuclear deterrent guarantees our independence and the ultimate protection of our vital interests.”

Stale thinking, and dangerous, like the nuclear stockpiles left over from the Cold War.