
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, August 2, 1995                   TAG: 9508040017
SECTION: NATL/INTL                    PAGE: A7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE: PARIS                                 LENGTH: Short

REPORT: FRENCH NUCLEAR TESTS LED TO FALLOUT 3 TIMES

France set off 204 nuclear blasts in the South Pacific over the past 30 years, including bombs dropped from planes, and had to clean up fallout from three tests, according to a Defense Ministry report.

In a newly declassified report, the ministry said French planes dropped nuclear bombs near the Mururoa Atoll in 1966, 1973 and 1974.

President Jacques Chirac provoked international outrage when he announced June 13 that France will set off eight nuclear blasts at Mururoa beginning as early as this month, ending a three-year moratorium.

The report, declassified in July, lists all of France's nuclear tests, including the first, codenamed ``Gerboise Bleue,'' set off Feb. 13, 1960, on a tower in the Algerian Sahara Desert.

France switched to underground testing in 1961, then moved to the Mururoa and Fangataufa Atolls.

After three above-ground test explosions in 1966 and 1973, France had to clean up radioactive fallout, the report said. It didn't give any details on the extent of the contamination, or how it was cleaned up.

- Associated Press

by CNB