French Nuclear Program Research Articles

Nuclear reach: uranium prospection and the global ambitions of the French nuclear programme, 1945–65

ABSTRACT By the 1960s, French uranium geologists were prospecting on every continent. This paper considers the link between this form of ‘nuclear reach’ and the weapons tests, reactor sales, and scientific exchanges that characterised the French programme. The shifting status of uranium during the early nuclear age and the prospection of uranium by French geologists reveals much about the evolving ambitions of the French nuclear leadership. Geophysics and ore concentration, alongside nucleonics and reactor design, were lynchpin techniques of this era, and the diplomatic and commercial stakes involved were central to the calculations of the French nuclear leadership.

Nuclear Migrants, Radical Protest, and the Transnational Movement against French Nuclear Testing in the 1960s: The 1967 Voyage of the <em>Trident</em>

This article explores the origins and early years of the Australian movement against the French nuclear testing program in the South Pacific, which ran from 1966 to 1996. In particular, it looks at the transnational frame of Australian activism by focusing on an early example of direct action, the Committee Against Atomic Testing (CAAT). Established in Sydney in 1964, CAAT was conceived as a vehicle for organising the Trident protest voyage that sailed from Sydney towards French Polynesia in 1967. Although the voyage only travelled as far as the Cook Islands, it is significant for a number of reasons. Firstly, it illuminates the role of British and American migrants in radicalising the Sydney Left in the early to mid-1960s. Many of these, especially those from the United States, were self-described “nuclear migrants,” fleeing radioactive fallout, Cold War propaganda, and the excesses of materialism back home. Several were involved in CAAT, helping to radicalise its ideas and its place in broader, international trends of direct action and radical pacifism. Secondly, the campaign of the Trident and its evolution is illustrative of a broader trend of experimentation with radical protest in opposition to French nuclear testing that was garnering interest among many on the Left in Australia in the mid to late 1960s.

The French nuclear programme: Part I. Political, institutional and logistical factors

The French nuclear power programme is perceived to have overcome the twin problems of deteriorating economics and implacable opposition. This, the first of a pair of articles, examines the political and institutional structures that enabled this programme to be carried through, including the history of nuclear power in France, technology choice and the significance of standardisation. It concludes that the common perceptions that the French nuclear power programme has required centralised, dirigist decision– making was particularly true for the period 1974–81, when most orders were placed. The policy before 1974 was more flexible, while by 1981 there remained few degrees of freedom left to the Mitterand government. One of the major achievements of the programme was the transformation of the French power station supply sector from being fragmented and weak into a unified structure capable of supplying nuclear plant more cheaply and efficiently than almost anywhere else in the world.

Introduction: Global Order, Cooperation between the Superpowers, and Alliance Politics in the Making of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Regime

Introduction: Global Order, Cooperation between the Superpowers, and Alliance Politics in the Making of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Regime

Being Nuclear: Africans and the Global Uranium Trade by Gabrielle Hecht (review)

Reviewed by: Being Nuclear: Africans and the Global Uranium Trade by Gabrielle Hecht Itty Abraham (bio) Being Nuclear: Africans and the Global Uranium Trade. By Gabrielle Hecht. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012. Pp. xiv+452. $29.95. What makes something nuclear? What marks the boundaries of the nuclear world? These foundational questions are rarely, if ever, asked by nuclear scholars. In her response, Gabrielle Hecht, a prizewinning historian of the French nuclear program, offers a sweeping view of an interconnected world that joins mines, workers, and radiation with colonialism, transnational agencies, and geopolitics. Taken by themselves, few of these categories are particularly novel; by taking them together, this book helps change permanently how we think of nuclear topics. Hecht’s vision of the nuclear world stands in sharp opposition to nuclear studies as conventionally understood. This is not the overdetermined space of covert proliferators, power “too cheap to meter,” and mystical pronouncements that have helped make nuclear objects and people among the most exceptional objects of the twentieth century. By exposing the disciplining effects of what she calls “nuclearity,” this book is able to unsettle well-worn cultures of nuclear behavior and scholarship. Nuclearity is an unstable and contested category that sanctions (in both senses) some “nation(s), program(s), technolog(ies), material(s), and workplace(s)” as properly nuclear while preventing others from being included in the same field. Nuclearity is not an attribute uniquely aligned with a fixed set of nuclear things as much as “a property distributed among things” that changes with time and place (p. 14; emphasis in original). The greatest absence from the nuclear world, Hecht argues, is Africa. Long the source of most of the world’s uranium, a key ingredient of nuclear power, Africa’s uranium suppliers have only rarely been seen as part of the nuclear world, with the notable exception of South Africa. It is only at political-critical moments, as when George W. Bush’s administration claimed that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger, that this veil is pulled aside to acknowledge an African presence in the nuclear commodity chain. And even this was only momentary: the story soon morphed into Beltway jousting and eventually a movie about a former U.S. ambassador and his CIA-employed wife. Hecht’s book is devoted to redressing Africa’s absence from nuclear histories, making, ironically, Africa nuclear. The book is divided into two parts: the first locates nuclear power within a global political economy—“Proliferating Markets”—while the second takes on the task of exploring “Nuclear Work,” a historical and ethnographic account of mines, labor, exclusion, and sickness in the uranium zones of Madagascar, Gabon, South Africa, and Namibia. Together, they work to give entirely new meanings to nuclear power, introducing new actors, archives, networks, spaces, and techniques, while also removing [End Page 996] the nuclear object from its familiar location within state-centered regimes of secrecy and control. The political-economy story makes a mockery of familiar tropes of nuclear exceptionalism. In order to become a “normal” commodity in world markets, suppliers of nuclear ores had to make their substance banal. Their efforts to do so exposed the limits of nuclear power as a commercial commodity; uranium, we find, would be unable entirely to free itself of its technopolitical entanglements and meanings. The unequal contest between “free” trade and national sovereignty, a hallmark of cold war economic relations, would be as true for nuclear fuel as for other primary products, from rubber to copper. France and Great Britain would demand a greater freedom to trade—a right not offered to nuclear suppliers in Africa, who, in turn, would seek to reinforce the idea of uranium as an exceptional material to acquire rents in excess of market values. The shifting boundary between the exceptional and the banal is equally visible in the uranium mines, the difference being that becoming banal also meant an extremely hazardous workplace for black miners. Given the established dangers of radon poisoning and prolonged exposure to radioactive ores, mining corporations would seek to remove uranium mines from the nuclear world in order to evade higher standards of worker protection and safety. Hence, on the one hand, South Africa...

Speciation of An(IV) (Pu, Np, U and Th) in citrate media

The acquisition of additional data concerning actinide decorporation is planned under the French nuclear and environmental toxicology program.

New Zealand's International Environmental Policies

New Zealand's geographic isolation has led to the development of a diverse and unique environment. Yet, despite the significant human impact of settlement, first by the ancestors of the present Maori population and later by Europeans, it was not until the 1980s that New Zealand began to play a leading role in the growing international dialogue on environmental questions. Initially attention centred on opposition to the French nuclear testing programme, but soon encompassed fishing, the threat to Antarctica from mineral exploitation and climate change. The author discusses New Zealand's distinctive position in relation to the postRio 1992 Framework Convention on Climate Change, and concludes that it has lost much of the reputation it acquired in the 1980s as a leader on international environmental issues.

The radiance of France: nuclear power and national identity after World War II

Winner of the 1999 Herbert Baxter Adams Prize of the American Historical Association. and Winner of the 2001 Edelstein Prize (formerly the Dexter Prize) presented by the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT). This award is given to the author of an outstanding scholarly book in the history of technology published during any of the three years preceding the award. Thanks to Gabrielle Hecht's talent and insight, the French nuclear program she explores has turned out to be for STS what the drosophila was for genetic research. This book only sheds new light on the role of technology in the construction of national identities. It is also seminal contribution to the history of contemporary France. --from the foreword by Michel Callon, coauthor of Acting in an Uncertain World In the aftermath of World War II, as France sought distinctive role for itself in the modern, postcolonial world, the nation and its leaders enthusiastically embraced large technological projects in general and nuclear power in particular. The Radiance of France asks how it happened that technological prowess and national glory (or radiance, which also means radiation in French) became synonymous in France as nowhere else. To answer this question, Gabrielle Hecht has forged an innovative combination of technology studies and cultural and political history in book that, as Michel Callon writes in the new foreword to this edition, not only sheds new light on the role of technology in the construction of national identities but is also a seminal contribution to the history of contemporary France. Proposing the concept of technopolitical regime as way to analyze the social, political, cultural, and technological dynamics among engineering elites, unionized workers, and rural communities Hecht shows how the history of France's first generation of nuclear reactors is also history of the multiple meanings of nationalism, from the postwar period (and France's desire for post-Vichy redemption) to 1969 and the adoption of Frenchified American design. This paperback edition of Hecht's groundbreaking book includes both Callon's foreword and an afterword by the author in which she brings the story up to date, and reflects on such recent developments as the 2007 French presidential election, the promotion of nuclear power as the solution to climate change, and France's aggressive exporting of nuclear technology. Inside Technology series

Teleoperation and nuclear services advantages of computerized operator-assistance tools

From the beginnings of the French nuclear energy program, Framatome has developed a considerable current of activities in the nuclear services field, and in the process has acquired extensive experience in using special maintenance tools and equipment on nuclear power plant (NPP) sites, for performing nuclear services in radioactive environments. Over the years, these tools and equipment have made greater and greater use of robotics, to ensure that higher and higher requirements for reliability, cost, and schedule could be met. Framatome has benefited from this nuclear services experience on the occasion of its first jobs in the dismantling field. Moreover, this experience has made it possible to determine the paths to progress as concerns work in hostile environments and to define the technical development themes to follow.

Management and disposal of short-lived waste in a large programme (France)

The long-term management of radioactive wastes is a key part of the French nuclear programme. A public organisation, the National Radioactive Waste Management Agency (ANDRA), is in charge of such management. The approach adopted in France is to dispose of solid or solidified short-lived wastes of low and intermediate activity in surface land disposal using the principle of multiple barriers throughout the period necessary for the radioactivity to decay to a level at which it is no longer hazardous to the environment. Two centres of this type have been established, the first—the `La Manche' Disposal Centre—has received over 500 000 m 3 of waste during the 25 years of its operation from 1969 to 1994. The `Aube' Disposal Centre, designed to accommodate 1 million m 3, has now taken over. ANDRA has established an integrated management system covering every stage of conditioning, transporting and disposing the different types of waste produced. The aim of this system is to guarantee safety at acceptable cost by minimising the environmental impact and the overall operating constraints.

Enacting Cultural Identity: Risk and Ritual in the French Nuclear Workplace

On 16 October 1969, Marcel Boiteux, the president of Electricite de France (EDF), visited his company's Saint-Laurent nuclear site. He announced that the national electric utility would stop building the gas-graphite reactors which had until then constituted the core of France's nuclear programme and served as one of the most prominent technological embodiments of French national grandeur. The very next day, in a dramatic coincidence of time and place, one of the most serious accidents the nuclear industry had seen so far caused a partial meltdown of Saint-Laurent 1, the newest and most powerful of these reactors. This double blow threatened not only the ideological underpinnings of the French nuclear programme, but also the cultural identities of those who worked in its power plants. Workers spent a full year cleaning and repairing the reactor, often working in a highly radioactive environment. This clean-up operation became a pivotal moment in their working lives. Even though the announcement and the accident together signalled the end of their gas-graphite programme as a statesanctioned symbol of French technological grandeur, cleaning Saint-Laurent 1 made the men who engaged in this process see themselves as heroes. This article argues that the technological and cultural aspects of the operation were inseparable: in cleaning and repairing the reactor, nuclear workers healed the harm that the events of October 1969 had inflicted upon their self-image, cemented their loyalty toward each other and toward the gas-graphite programme, and affirmed and redefined their role in the story of French technological grandeur. This analysis provides an insight into how the language, artifacts, gestures and practices that together form workplace experience constitute a mechanism by which workers both shape and enact one aspect of their cultural identity. It also sheds light on a sorely neglected aspect of postsecond world war history: namely, how the ideologies of high technology come to have meaning for those who work in large-scale technological systems. Part of this argument rests upon a theoretical framework that meshes historiographical insights from two domains of scholarship: the cultural history of labour and the history and sociology of technology. Although these two bodies of scholarship almost never cite one another, they make similar types of arguments about the cultural construction of the material world. Recently, for example, cultural historians of labour have argued that scholars

Technique for power ramp tests in the ISABELLE 1 loop of the OSIRIS reactor

The requirements set by the operators of the French nuclear programme, chiefly EDF, Framatome and the safety authorities, for the determination of the technological limit of pressurized water reactor fuels in transient conditions, led the CEA to start a major programme for the qualification of experimental irradiations, and particularly power ramps. The ISABELLE 1 loop, installed in the OSIRIS reactor at Saclay, has been equipped since 1992 with sophisticated instrumentation for power determinations by heat balance. A programme of intercomparison with nuclear measurements (γ spectrometry, dosimetry, radiochemical analysis) helped to qualify these thermal measurements. Thermohydraulic and neutron modelling of the ISABELLE 1 loop substantiated the various corrections to be made to the heat balance. The reproducibility of the test was established by using a neutron signal to drive the position of the loop according to the ramp sequence, and by a special quality assurance programme. Cladding failures by pellet-cladding interaction were systematically observed in the maximum power zone determined by γ spectrometry.

Outlook for inertial confinement fusion

During the next ten years the National Ignition Facility (NIF) will be completed and substantial fusion gains are likely to be achieved with the NIF megajoule class solid state laser. A facility very similar to NIF is being constructed by the French nuclear weapons program. Technological advances promise to make ICF increasingly attractive as a practical energy source. These advances include very high gain targets (e.g., the fast ignitor), petawatt lasers, diode pumped solid state lasers, and advanced heavy ion accelerators. Beyond the next ten years an experimental inertial fusion (IF) reactor will be needed to take the major step from NIF to a practical fusion power plant. A key question: how is this IF experimental reactor to be funded? A 100 MWe scale IF reactor could produce several kilograms per year of low cost tritium for DOE Defense Programs. Tritium produced by competing fission reactor and accelerator/spallation options is estimated to cost more than one hundred million dollars per kilogram, much more than the cost of tritium produced by a fusion reactor. Tritium production provides a defense funded option for IF`s next step beyond NIF.

French nuclear testing: A fool's errand

Tariq Rauf is Director of the International Organizations and Nonproliferation Project of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. Previously, he served as Nonproliferation Expert at the Office of the Ambassador for Disarmament, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade in Canada, and Senior Associate at the Canadian Centre for Global Security. Only personal views are expressed in this viewpoint. Despite protests from all parts of the world, France resumed underground nuclear testing on September 5, 1995, for the ostensible reason of calibrating equipment to facilitate computer simulations designed to check the reliability of French nuclear warheads. France detonated a small nuclear device equivalent to about 8,000 tons of TNT at its Mururoa test-site in the South Pacific (Centre d’Experimentations du Pacific). Some arms control experts, however, believe that the real reason for the series of tests is to certify a new nuclear warhead (TN-76/TN-100) for the M-45/M-5 submarine-launched ballistic missile (and also possibly for a new cruise missile, though this seems unlikely). Despite strong international opposition, France carried out a second nuclear test, in the current series, at Fangataufa on October 1. Announced on June 13, 1995, by the new President of France Jacques Chirac as his presidential debut on the international stage, this new series of up to eight tests, did not come as a surprise, though it was roundly criticized internationally. Only Colonel Mu’ammar alQadhdhafi, the Libyan leader, endorsed Chirac’s plan. In his election campaign, Chirac noted the necessity of temporarily resuming testing, which had been suspended by his predecessor President Francois Mitterand in 1992, to maintain France’s nuclear arsenal. Chirac’s presidential announcement also noted that the new series of tests would be concluded by May 1996, and that France would then go on to sign a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) in the fall of 1996. The resumption of French nuclear weapon testing has evoked strong criticism internationally and has resulted in France being perceived as somewhat of a nuclear pariah, particularly by nations in the South Pacific. Australia and Chile recalled their envoys from Paris, while New Zealand, Japan, and South Pacific Forum nations issued condemnations, and peace groups set up protests ranging from Europe to the South Pacific. The inopportune political timing and insensitivity of France’s testing program is only exceeded by that of China, which conducted a nuclear test in mid-May, barely three days after the ending of the historic Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) 1995 Review and Extension Conference. Ironically, France played a constructive role at that conference by helping shape language on two key decisions (i.e. “principles and objectives” and “strengthened review”) to which it is a party. In its efforts to justify its testing program, the French government has linked its international stature and influence to its nuclear weapon capabilities and has even offered to extend its nuclear umbrella to defend its European Union (E.U.) partners. These blandishments, however, have not gone over well as several E.U. members have questioned French political wisdom and sincerity. Perhaps more significantly, the standing of both President Chirac and his government in domestic public opinion in France has markedly declined. In order to properly assess France’s position on the necessity of the current series of tests, it would be useful to briefly examine the history of the French nuclear testing program, its nuclear force posture, as well as France’s stance toward nuclear arms control.

Political Designs: Nuclear Reactors and National Policy in Postwar France

Political Designs: Nuclear Reactors and National Policy in Postwar France GABRIELLE HECHT The image of technology marching forward to the beat of its own drum, sending repercussions throughout society, has been repeatedly and successfully challenged in the past decade. We have yet to persuade wider audiences, but at least in the general field of science and technology studies, technological determinism is dead. The demise of technological determinism means that studies of technological design and development must now do more than just show how political, social, economic, and cultural considerations shape and become part of technology. We are presently poised to use technological artifacts as lenses through which to view broader historical questions, to understand how the process of shaping technology can also be the process of shaping politics, society, and culture. The time is ripe for the history of technological design and development to become a more integral part of mainstream history.1 This article delineates one way in which a close examination of technological design can contribute to broader historical questions. By Dr. Hecht is assistant professor in the history department at Stanford University. This work was funded in part by grants from the National Science Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and the Institute ofElectrical and Electronics Engineers. An earlier version of the article was awarded the Levinson Prize by the Society for the History of Technology and was presented at the 1991 SHOT meeting in Madison, Wisconsin, and several other locations. The author thanks Thomas P. Hughes, Robert Frost, Nina Lerman, Eric Schatzberg, David Shearer, and a Technology and Culture reviewer for their comments on previous drafts of this article. 'Works that have implicitly or explicitly made this point recently include (but are by no means limited to) Thomas P. Hughes, American Genesis: A Century of Invention and TechnologicalEnthusiasm, 1870-1970 (New York, 1989); andJudith McGaw, Most Wonderful Machine: Mechanization and Social Change in Berkshire Paper Making, 1801— 1885 (Princeton, N.J., 1987). I do not wish to imply that mainstream historians have ignored works in the history of technology or that these works have not contributed to other areas of historical scholarship—they have done so most fruitfully. But, studies of technological design have tended to concentrate on deconstructing the processes of invention, development, and diffusion, thereby speaking primarily to audiences already interested in technology. Such analyses have many virtues, but contributing to broader historical debates is not among them.© 1994 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040-165X,/94/3504-0001$01.00 657 658 Gabrielle Hecht placing the design of two nuclear reactors in the political framework of postwar France, I show that these reactors were more than technological artifacts. Engineers and managers inscribed their political agendas into the design of their reactors, and for a variety of reasons, including the instability of government leadership in the 1950s, these designs in turn became part ofFrench political discourse. Each reactor came to embody a particular vision of the French state, and each became a powerful tool in shaping both nuclear and industrial policy in postwar France.2 The article begins with a quick sketch of postwar France and an outline of the creation of the two institutions that made up the core of the French nuclear program: the Commissariat à l’Énergie Atomique (CEA)—the atomic energy commission—and Électricité de France (EDF)—the nationalized electric utility company. Through the early 1950s, the nuclear program rested solely in the hands of CEAleaders, so I next discuss how these men picked the gas-graphite reactor design over other choices. Finally, the bulk of this article compares the designs of two early gas-graphite reactors, one financed by the CEA, the other by EDF. The two institutions collaborated on the design and construction of both reactors: France did not have the financial, human, or political resources to sustain separate programs. But, even though each institu­ tion needed the other in order to build a nuclear program, they had different, sometimes conflicting, political, industrial, and technological agendas. Each reactor thus became a distinct political, industrial, and technological statement. France after the Second World War World War II left France both economically and psychologically devastated. The German...

Up Close: Materials Research at the Grenoble Nuclear Research Center of the French Atomic Energy Commission (CEA)

Most great technological advances initially required finding a solution to materials problems, a fact that is not very often recognized. The development of nuclear energy is no exception to this rule. The fuel in the reactor core, cladding of the fuel, and structures which support the core or which carry the coolant are, indeed, subjected to extreme conditions of radiation flux, temperature, pressure, and corrosion. In order to achieve safe, industrial reactors, the French Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) had to build an enormous program in materials research and development from the ground floor. At present, CEA has reached a very high level of knowledge and expertise through excellent scientific teams and exceptional equipment.In its present industrial phase, the French Nuclear Program still requires considerable effort in research, but it does enable the nation's industry to take advantage of the CEA's materials capabilities. In accordance with its mission to facilitate the utilization of research results, the CEA launched research and development programs in different non-nuclear industries where its research could find new applications.Since its creation in 1955, the Grenoble Nuclear Research Center (CEN-G), one of the five civilian centers of the CEA, has concentrated a great part of its research on basic (solid-state physics) and applied aspects (nuclear metallurgy). This double orientation, in which basic research is used as a basis for applied research, is an original feature of the CEN-G.

Settlement of international disputes: The “Rainbow Warrior” affair

This was originally an address by Geoffrey Palmer to the University of Virginia School of Law, Virginia, on 3 November 1988. In May 1973 the New Zealand Labour Government commenced a case before the International Court of Justice against the French Government, seeking the end of atmospheric testing by France of nuclear weapons. Australia and New Zealand argued that the French nuclear testing programme was contrary to international law. New Zealand said that French Government tests in the South Pacific region that give rise to radioactive fallout constituted a violation of New Zealand’s rights. The Court gave interim relief, indicating that pending further stays of the case France should cease testing. In December 1974 the Court held that since France had promised not to test nuclear weapons in the atmosphere and was bound by that promise, the proceedings no longer had any purpose and the Court did not need to decide them. France in 1974 moved to terminate its acceptance of the Court’s jurisdiction. And they resumed testing underground in the same location. The address covers the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone Treaty and the nuclear theme which permeates the international disputes dealt with under the topic. It discusses the two quiet extraordinary issues which confronted New Zealand in the international legal sphere in the 1980s. Both involved countries which were traditional friends. These were the disagreement between New Zealand and the United States about the admission of nuclear armed ships to New Zealand ports, and the dispute between New Zealand and France flowing from the ‘Rainbow Warrior’ affair. Both issues were accompanied by high level political atmospherics on all sides. Both problems involved significant legal issues. The Nuclear Ships disagreement is discussed with reference to New Zealand’s deep abhorrence of nuclear weapons. The paper then turns to consider the second major international legal dispute – the Rainbow Warrior affair. This issue brought home to New Zealand in a very concrete way the painful truths which underlay analysis of the problems of small countries. On 10 July 1985 the civilian ship the Rainbow Warrior was covertly and illegally sunk at its moorings by French agents. Two days later, two agents of the French Directorate General of External Security were arrested and prosecuted for manslaughter and wilful damage. They were sentenced to ten years imprisonment each. The address uses the Rainbow Warrior affair as one of several examples of the options open to smaller countries when confronted with the practical problem of how to settle an international legal dispute in a manner that is fair and equitable. Along with the Rainbow Warrior affair it mentions the Eichmann incident between Israel and Argentina when Israeli agents kidnapped a German war criminal from Argentina. It then considers the Israeli assassination of a Moroccan citizen believed to be a member of Black September in Oslo and the subsequent arrests of Israeli agents complicit in the assassination. What the three cases have in common is a serious violation of international law involving an act of force by military or para-military personnel by a friendly country. In terms of domestic law each case involved the commission of a serious crime. In two of the cases death was involved, and in the Rainbow Warrior affair, the victim was an entirely innocent civilian.

Au sujet de la perception de la France dans le Pacifique insulaire : Pour une contribution à l'histoire de temps mal conjugués

France seems to have constantly ran counter to régional move when we consider her overseas territories in the Pacific Basin. This is the case with the constitutional autonomies she first gave to French Polynesia and New Caledonia, years before the Anglo-Saxon metropolitan countries, to retract herself later while the majority of the British, Australian and New Zealand colonies reached independency. This is also the case with the French nuclear test programme which started in the Tuamotu archipelago while the United States and Britain had stopped their own. In declining to take into account the regional context, France produced a negative image in both Australasia and independent Pacific countries. And relationships of dependency, at the political and economical levels as well as in the religious and institutional spheres, which link the latter to the former, favour the emergence of a large negative consensus towards France in the region.

Sodium leak threatens French nuclear power programme

Sodium leak threatens French nuclear power programme

Use of soil improvement techniques in the realization of the French nuclear power programme : Working Group from E.D.F/Septen Proc 8th European Conference on Soil Mechanics and Foundation Engineering, Helsinki, 23–26 May 1983V1, P101–112. Publ Rotterdam: A. A. Balkema, 1983

Use of soil improvement techniques in the realization of the French nuclear power programme : Working Group from E.D.F/Septen Proc 8th European Conference on Soil Mechanics and Foundation Engineering, Helsinki, 23–26 May 1983V1, P101–112. Publ Rotterdam: A. A. Balkema, 1983