Paris - France continued its nuclear tests in the south Pacific in the 1960s even after learning it was exposing the local population to exceptionally dangerous levels of radioactive fallout, a French magazine alleged yesterday.
Quoting from defence documents which it said had now been sealed because of its investigation, the Nouvel Observateur weekly said some 1,200 Polynesians on four islands close to France's Mururoa and Fangataufa test sites were placed at severe risk but the authorities publicly described the tests as "innocuous".
France stopped atmospheric tests in the south Pacific in 1968, and evacuated the population of Tureia in that year for the detonation of its first Hbomb. In 1974, it switched to underground tests.