Between 1966 and 1996, France conducted 193 nuclear experiments above and beneath the atolls of Mururoa and Fangataufa in the Tuamoyu Archipelago of French Polynesia. After cessation of all testing in 1996, the French government requested that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) conduct a study to assess the radiological impact of the tests. This study was carried out between 1996 and 1998, and a full report was published in 1998 under the title The Radiological Situation at the Atolls of Mururoa and Fangataufa. The self-described goals of the report were to ascertain whether "as a consequence of the tests, radiological hazards exist now or will exist in the future" and to make "recommendations of any monitoring, follow-up or remedial action that might be required."

A critical examination of the IAEA report is interesting on two counts. From the point of view of safety, much can be learned about the exact radiological situation at the two atolls and nearby areas, including the residual radioactive material that was present underground, that had migrated to the surface, and that had dispersed throughout the ocean, along with this material's implications for the biosphere. Yet even more can be inferred from what the report omits or skims over: namely, the sources of the radioactive data presented and the doses received by inhabitants at the time when the tests were carried out. The following analysis will summarize the report's highlights, as well as critique the IAEA's methods in carrying out its investigation. A direct correlation exists between these methods and the anti-disclosure politics of the French government with respect to the nuclear tests conducted in the Pacific.

The French test sites in the Pacific were Moruroa and Fangataufa, two atolls in the southeastern area of the Tuamotu Archipelago in French Polynesia. The Moruroa Atoll is one of the largest coral atolls in that area. It has the form of an incomplete ring encircling a lagoon and measures 26 kilometers from east to west and ten kilometers from north to south. The 65 kilometerlong reefcrown is open, leaving a five-kilometer wide passage into the lagoon on the northwestern side. The lagoon has an average depth of 40 meters and is the crater of an extinct underwater volcano, around which outer coral has grown above sea level to form the visible rim. The distance to the nearest inhabited island, Tureia, is 100 kilometers, the distance to Tahiti is 1,200 kilometers, and New Zealand is 4,200 kilometers away. The atoll was uninhabited before the installation of the test center.

Fangataufa, a much smaller atoll, is located 41 kilometers southsoutheast of Moruroa. It measures five by eight kilometers and was also uninhabited before the tests. In contrast to Moruroa, Fangataufa had been a closed atoll; the French military therefore opened a 400-meter gap in the coral ring to enable ships to enter the lagoon.

From 1966 to 1990, 167 nuclear explosions were performed at these two atolls, including surface tests, air drops from planes, and, after 1975, underground explosions at a rate of four to eleven per year. Until 1996, sources of reliable information on the tests and their outcomes were limited due to the extreme secrecy practiced by the French military. Between 1966 and 1996, only four independent missions have been permitted to conduct investigations: a French scientific mission in 1982; a New Zealand, Australian, and Papua New Guinea scientific mission in 1983; the Cousteau scientific mission in 1987; and the mission of the Associated French Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (AMFPGN) in 1990. All these missions were extremely limited in duration (ranging from three to five days) and in their access to relevant data, sites, or samples, such as coral and sediment from within the lagoon and specific areas of the atoll. Thus, the 1998 report is the best, if not the only, source of information on the consequences of the testing.

The report found that the terrestrial and aquatic environments of the Mururoa and Fangataufa atolls that are accessible to people contain residual radioactive material attributable to the nuclear experiments, but generally at very low concentrations that the report concluded were of no radiological significance. Thus, a hypothetical population living on the atolls and depending solely on local resources for food would receive a radiation dose of less than one part in 200 of the annual background radiation dose that such a resident population would unavoidably receive from natural sources. The nearest populationthat of the Tureia atoll-is predicted to receive an insignificant one part in 10,000 of the annual background dose. The migration of radioactive material produced by the underground nuclear tests as well as the dispersion of radioactive material through the ocean will stay within background levels. The only potential danger to the biosphere arises from the high plutonium levels found in particulates such as the sediment of sandbanks in the northern atoll. Overall, the report concluded that the expected radiation dose rates and modes of exposure are such that no effects on animal or plant population groups could arise: although occasionally individual members of species might be harmed, it is unlikely that entire species would become endangered or that imbalances between species would occur.

Thus the findings of the IAEA report seem to be comforting for the French government and the international community's concerns about radioactive safety in the Pacific. However, if closer scrutiny is brought upon the methods of the IAEA, its findings will inevitably lose some of their authoritativeness. First, much of the information used in the report was provided by the French government. The information was, "where practicable," validated by an independent sampling and surveillance campaign, yet this campaign was also conducted with "the consent and support" of French authorities.

Even if the integrity of the findings were beyond question, the report leaves out several important indicators of the nuclear assays' impact. The report did not attempt to assess the doses received by inhabitants of the region as a result of the atmospheric nuclear tests at the time when those tests were carried out. Yet these data seem to be the most relevant, as they represent the upper boundary of the radioactive exposure of the atolls' inhabitants. In addition, the report claimed that "it is not possible to place reliable quantitative limits on the errors associated with the dose assessments." Although the IAEA's estimated future doses are in fact the upper limits measured, there is still considerable uncertainty as to the range of error these doses span.