Blue Jerboa: the first French nuclear testing in Algeria on 13 February 1960

France conducted 210 nuclear tests, since the very first shot in the Sahara in 1960 until the final testing in January 1996 in Polynesia.

•     The other European nuclear power, Britain has, by comparison, processed to 45 shots. The United States topped the number of atomic tests (over a thousand), and the former USSR (over 700).
  
      Blue jerboa, the first French test, was held on 13 February 1960, in Algeria which was still a French colony, at Reggane in the Sahara, fifteen years after the explosion of the first American atomic bomb in the desert of New Mexico in 1945. The Russians had the A-bomb since 1949 and the British since 1952.
  
      Starting from 1960, France performs 17 tests in the Sahara: 4 in the air and 13 underground.
  
      In 1966, the range is moved to the South Pacific, on the atolls of Mururoa and Fangataufa in the Tuamotu Archipelago, 1,200 km south-east of Tahiti (French Polynesia). This is where are based the facilities the Centre of Experimentation of the Pacific (CEP).
  
      2 July 1966, when the first shot on the atoll of Mururoa, until the last firing thirty years later, France will lead the 193 nuclear tests in the South Pacific.
  
      41 are air tests, mostly under captive balloon, but dropped by barge or aircraft combat.
  
      Starting from 1975, 137 tests are performed, plus 15 safety experiments.
  
      On 8 April 1992, President François Mitterrand decreed a moratorium on testing. His successor Jacques Chirac puts an end to the moratorium in 1995, just after his election. Six tests were conducted between September 5 1995 and 27 January 1996.
  
      At the end of this campaign that triggers a global outcry, the Head of State announced January 29 that France will sign the Comprehensive Test (CTBT). Accession to the Treaty is ratified by Parliament on 26 April 1998. France puts an end to nuclear testing and permanently dismantles the test site. It has continued a program of simulations of nuclear tests.
  
          
  Ennaharonline/ M. O.