Nuclear Tests: Paris to Unveil Law Plan on Compensation Tuesday

The French Defense Minister Hervé Morin would unveil Tuesday a bill to compensate victims of the 210 nuclear tests conducted by France from 1960 to 1996 in the Sahara and Polynesia, text eagerly awaited by veterans' associations.

The objective is to file it by the end of the first semester, 10 million euros of annual planned as a first step, says the Department of Defense where it is said, however, that the number of victims involved is unknown. It concerns civilians and military personnel employed by the defense or by companies such as the Commission for Atomic Energy (CAE) or their subcontractors, but also Algerians or Polynesians who lived nearby, said the same source. For all the victims, who were of far different regimes, the implementation decrees will set a list of 18 diseases (leukemia, breast cancer, thyroid ...). The list will be modelled on that established by an agency of the United Nations, the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCAER). It may however be extended at the option of changing medical knowledge, said the same source. In the same way, the geographical areas will be very precisely determined by decree, the law providing for the relevant periods, which will extend until the dismantling of a facility. The compensation files will be entrusted to a committee of nine members, mostly doctors, and the defense minister will have the last word. The Department of Defense recognizes several incidents during which four tests conducted in galleries in the Sahara that were not completely confined, especially the 1st May 1962 when radioactive fallout have been identified within a band of more than 150 km. In Polynesia, said on the same source, about 41 air tests, a dozen radioactive fallout have been noted on the surrounding atolls of which 6 had a radiological impact. Ennaharonline/ AFP

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