May 1, 1962: A tragic anniversary
May 1, 2012
"Regarding this anniversary, the Arms Observatory sends you this statement released by the association Moruroa e tatou* :"
50 years ago in the Sahara:
The failed nuclear test of May 1, 1962
On May 1, 1962, the Beryllium nuclear test, intended to test the first bomb for the Mirage IV nuclear deterrent of France, exploded the Hoggar mountain in In Eker, under the horrified eyes of several hundred military and civilian personnel, including the French ministers Pierre Messmer and Gaston Palewski.
Something went wrong...
Wow!
The radioactive cloud
The incident file
Pierre Messmer, Minister of Defense
The incredible panic that followed this failure by the CEA (Commissariat à l'énergie nucléaire) experts in charge of developing the bombs is summarized in a few figures: on the same day, 900 military and civilian personnel had to be decontaminated, and as these measures were ineffective, another 775 had to be decontaminated within the 8 days that followed, not to mention the dozens of military personnel sent to the Percy military hospital in the Paris region for months of intensive care, in the greatest secrecy, with, for several, death as a result.
These facts have been reported by witnesses for more than 10 years. Unfortunately, in 2012, the Ministry of Defense is still in denial. Reading a report by the Minister of Defense from January 2007 on the tests in the Sahara, one would have avoided the worst: the radioactive cloud that emerged from the tunnel dug in the Tan Afela mountain would have headed east towards Libya, leaving only insignificant radioactive fallout on almost uninhabited areas. The 2007 military report even provides a map of the fallout, which served as a model for Mr. Hervé Morin, then Minister of Defense, to define the "geographical zone" of this region of the Sahara, where inhabitants could claim compensation under his law of January 5, 2010. As one can understand, since the fallout "by the greatest of chance" avoided the villages in the area, the compensation costs will be limited...
Unfortunately for Mr. Hervé Morin, uncovering the official lies, two former scientists from the contingent, MM Louis Bulidon and Raymond Séné, were present in In Eker in May 1962. They were in charge of radioactivity measurements and their equipment recorded the radioactive fallout of the Beryllium accident cloud in the north-south axis, that is, on the most populated area of the region, from the Tan Afela mountain in the north, to Tamanrasset and as far as the Niger River in the south. More than 5,000 people, men, women and children, living in this Hoggar region, not to mention the approximately 2,000 military and civilian personnel employed at the In Amguel base and the thousand local workers "recruited in the Sahara" were affected by the radioactive cloud. All the measurements made by our two scientists were recorded and they remain, today, locked in the secret archives, in the name of state reasons.
In their book, "Les irradiés de Béryl" (The Beryllium Victims), Louis Bulidon and Raymond Séné, respectively a chemical engineer and a nuclear physicist, have called for "lifting the leaden veil," which unfortunately has had no effect, recalling that "on May 1, 1962, and in the following days, hundreds, perhaps thousands of individuals, including Algerian women and children, received very disabling, even lethal, radioactive doses."
That was 50 years ago. It is time for state reasons to give way to the truth about nuclear tests and for the victims and their families - Algerian, Polynesian and French - to finally be recognized and compensated.
Reminder: French nuclear tests: the poisoned legacy
Moreover, Beryllium is not the only nuclear test that led to radioactive fallout for personnel and populations. After long claiming that its nuclear tests were "particularly clean," France finally admitted that they had caused casualties. Unfortunately, the law of January 5, 2010, leaves the Minister of Defense, the main responsible for the tests, full discretion to defend them. The book by Bruno Barrillot, "French Nuclear Tests: The Poisoned Legacy," published in February 2012 by the Arms Observatory (see attached file).
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