仏領ポリネシアでの核実験、影響調査を　仏議員ら要求

【パリＡＦＰ＝時事】フランス議会で、南太平洋に浮かぶ仏領ポリネシアで３０年以上にわたって行われた核実験の影響について調査を行う動きがある。（写真は資料写真）
　フランスは、１９６０～９０年代に仏領ポリネシアで２００回近い核実験を実施。６６～７４年には４１回の大気圏核実験を行った。
　民主・共和主義左派（ＧＤＲ）は議会審査を求める１会期につき１回の権利を行使し、調査を要求。「仏政府として、核実験の実施前、実施時点、そして今日に至るまでの影響について把握している事実を見直す必要がある」と主張した。
　仏領ポリネシア出身のメヘアナ・レイド・アルブロー議員はＧＤＲの報告書で、核爆発は「人々の健康、経済、社会、環境に極めて多くの影響をもたらした」と指摘。
　こうした影響について政府による「完全な説明」を求めるとともに、５０年代の核実験場選定の経緯を「解明」したいとしている。
　ＧＤＲは、核実験時の被ばく線量についての政府の主張は科学者の間でも論争になっており、修正されるべきとの見方も示している。
　調査の実施には、国防委員会による承認が必要とされる。【翻訳編集ＡＦＰＢＢＮｅｗｓ】
〔ＡＦＰ＝時事〕（2024/03/21-16:54）

French lawmakers are expected to launch a probe into the impact of the country's nuclear weapons tests in French Polynesia over three decades.
France detonated almost 200 bombs from the 1960s to the 1990s in French Polynesia -- a scattered Pacific island territory thousands of kilometres east of Australia -- including 41 atmospheric tests between 1966 and 1974.
We need to ask ourselves what the French government knew about the impact of the tests before they were carried out, as they occurred and up to today, the largely communist GDR group in the National Assembly said in a written request for an investigation.
The GDR used its right to request one parliamentary investigation per session to demand the probe, which must be formally approved by the defence committee.
The blasts had numerous consequences: They relate to health, the economy, society and the environment, GDR said in the text written by Mereana Reid Arbelot, a French Polynesian member of parliament.
She called for a full accounting of the consequences and added that the group wanted to shed light on how testing sites were first chosen during the 1950s.
Reid Arbelot said those decisions inflicted trauma on the civilian and military populations.
GDR said that Paris' claims about how much radiation people were exposed to at the time of the tests are contested among scientists and should be revised.
Paris first opened a path to compensation in 2010 when it acknowledged health and environmental impacts.
A study published by the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM) last year found that the nuclear tests slightly increased the risk of thyroid cancer for local people.
But campaigners at the time said that it should have looked at a larger segment of the population and called for more reparations.
On a 2021 visit, President Emmanuel Macron said the nation owed French Polynesia a debt for the nuclear tests, the last as recently as 1996.
He called for archives on the testing to be opened, save only the most sensitive military information.
France's independent nuclear programme was launched in the wake of World War II and pushed by Fifth Republic founder Charles de Gaulle.
One of nine nuclear powers in the world, it maintains a stock of around 300 warheads -- a similar level to China or Britain, but far short of heavyweights Russia and the United States.
French nuclear doctrine calls for the bombs to be used only if the country's vital interests are under threat -- a relatively vague term leaving the president wide leeway to decide on their use.