France turns back on nuke veterans

Jason Brown




Claiming compensation for ill health from decades of nuclear testing in French Polynesia is restricted to people outside the main population areas, confirms the French government.
French legislators passed the US$13 million compensation package in January 2010.
Official confirmation of the package was only published in the Official Journal on June 13.
Objections raised in French Polynesia regarding the compensation zone were not recognised.
Defence minister Hervé Morin instead insisted on tightly defining the zone to those areas of low population, claimed Moruroa e Tatou (MET), an anti-nuclear group in French Polynesia.
“All of Polynesia was copiously contaminated with 41 air tests between 1966 and 1974,” stated Moruroa e Tatou.
However, “the Morin Decree said radioactive clouds rolled selectively back from four islands and atolls and on some communes in French Polynesia”.
“Oddly,” continued MET president, Roland Oldham, “the least populated.”
None of the objections raised in French Polynesia have been accepted for use by the nuclear compensation committee, first set up in France in 2008.
How some parts of French Polynesia were judged eligible for nuclear compensation and not other more heavily populated areas remain a mystery.
Comparing distances from nuclear test sites shows downtown Pape’ete is 1,216 kilometres from Moruroa Atoll.
Another test site, Fangataufa, lies just a bit further away, at 1,247 kilometres.
But the French compo zone ends barely 70 kilometres from Pape’ete, at the small, southern tip of Tahiti, known as Tahiti Iti.
By far, the largest part of the population lies outside the compo zone, including Pape’ete, the long-time opposition stronghold, Faa’a and the second most populated island, Mo’orea.
Some 150,000 military and civilian personnel worked on the tests in the Sahara and in Polynesia, according to the privately run “Nuclear Gazette,” now in its 255th edition since it  started in 1976: infant mortality among children of nuclear test workers is three times the national average.
Just 3,200 cases are on the files at AVEN, the Association of Nuclear Test Veterans, with some 1,100 suffering from disease.
While expressing disappointment, it has been a strong start for AVEN, founded in 2001 with Moruroa e Tatou.
Less than 10 years later, an era, decades-long, of official French denials against the need for compensation appears over.
Exactly what the few who qualify get remains uncertain.
France compares unfavourably with treatment of nuclear veterans and citizens in the United States, where the Radiation Exposure Compensation Programme has seen some 22,630 claims settled against 9,045 denied—at a cost so far of US$1.5 billion, according to the June 18 figures, released just days after the French decree.
The US recognises a list of 27 different “causative diseases from nuclear testing and mining.
Last month, France adopted a list of just 14 diseases. That’s four less than the law adopted last year in Paris, according to Tahiti Presse Agency coverage of a press release from Moruroa e Tatou.
A list of diseases at the official French legal site shows the original list of 18 diseases.
However, as noted by Moruroa e Tatou, even this list of presumptive disease causes is watered down with an official get-out clause included in law.
“This presumption can be rebutted only if the risk due to nuclear testing can be considered negligible in view of the nature of the disease and the conditions of exposure to ionising radiation.”
Amounts announced also differ dramatically from US compensation levels.
With as many as 150,000 military and civilian workers, Morin announced in March 2009 a total of US$13.6 million—comparing unfavourably with the US$1.5 billion paid so far by the United States.
Set up in 1990, the US programme provides lump sum compensation awards for individuals who contracted specified diseases in three defined populations:
• individuals present at atmospheric nuclear weapons tests, who receive $75,000;
• uranium miners, millers, and ore transporters, $100,000;
• and individuals who lived downwind of the Nevada Test Site, $50,000.
However, French applicants enjoy no similar rights, having to go through a lengthy application process with only travel costs being met by the Ministry of Defence.
Oldham told Radio New Zealand International they will challenge the Morin Decree.
“We can put another court case, probably in the European Court of Human Rights. We do think the Polynesian people are motivated to keep struggling.”