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WORLD> Europe
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France to compensate nuclear test victims
(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-03-25 14:18 PARIS -- The French government offered for the first time Tuesday to compensate victims of nuclear tests in Algeria and the South Pacific, bowing to decades of pressure by people sickened by radiation, and seeking to soothe France's conscience. "It's time for our country to be at peace with itself, at peace thanks to a system of compensation and reparations," French Defense Minister Herve Morin said in presenting a draft law on the payouts.
Victims cautiously welcomed the move, nearly 50 years after France conducted its first atomic tests. But they say it's still too stingy, and is only a first step toward healing wounds left by explosions that sent blinding white flashes cascading over French Polynesia and the Sahara Desert. The French government will set aside some euro10 million ($13.5 million) for the compensation for the first year, Morin said. The US government, by comparison, has approved more than $1.38 billion in compensation to victims of nuclear tests since the enactment of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act in 1990. French army veteran Pierre Leroy recalled being present when a nuclear test explosion blasted through its containment structure and sent a radioactive cloud over the Sahara in 1962. "We were 19, 20 years old. They told us, 'There are no risks, it's not dangerous,'" he said. "There were no precautions." He described being worn down by years of subsequent government denials of negligence and refusals to compensate victims. "We're not asking for the moon," Leroy said. Some 150,000 people, including civilian and military personnel, were on site for the 210 tests France carried out, both in the atmosphere and underground, in the Sahara Desert and the South Pacific from 1960-1996. |
