Nuclear bomb tests carried out by the French colonial regime in the 1960s caused irreversible contamination of the Algerian Sahara’s landscapes and lives
Between 1960 and 1966, the French colonial regime detonated 17 nuclear bombs in colonised Algerian Sahara and tested other nuclear technologies and weapons, spreading radioactive fallout across Africa and the Mediterranean – including southern Europe – and causing irreversible contamination. France thus made its entry into the exclusive nuclear weapons club, becoming the fourth country to possess weapons of mass destruction after the United States, the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom. Such pride rarely seemed to be perturbed by the destruction of human, animal and vegetal lives and the toxification of hundreds of thousands of kilometres of natural, living and built environments in Algeria and elsewhere. These atomic explosions were carried out during the Algerian Revolution (1954–62); they were also conducted in spite of the Algerian referendum on 8 January 1961, which resulted in 75 per cent voting in favour of self-determination, and the ensuing independence from France the following spring, after 132 years of French colonial rule. Today, the radioactive remnants of France’s atomic infrastructure are either buried under the sand or freely circulating over the soil of the Sahara.
To detonate its four atmospheric atomic bombs, the French army secretly built the Centre Saharien d’Expérimentations Militaires (CSEM) in Reggane on the Tanezrouft plain of the Algerian Sahara, approximately 1,150km south of Algiers. To build the various constructions and infrastructures of the CSEM, the French army demarcated an immense area of about 100,000km2 that encompassed four geographic and functional zones: an existing and inhabited Saharan town, Reggane-Ville, located near an oasis; a new base-vie (base camp) called Reggane-Plateau for around 10,000 civil and military personnel, with underground laboratories and ateliers for the employees of the Commissariat à l’Énergie Atomique (CEA, or the Atomic Energy Commission); a new advanced base, Hamoudia; and a new zone des points zéro (ground zero zone), where the bombs were to be detonated. All these areas were to be connected with paved roads.
To carry out nuclear tests, the French army built the Centre Saharien d’Expérimentations Militaires (below) in the Sahara. The 2013 documentary AT(H)OME depicts the devastating impact on the landscape
Credit: Bruno Hadjih, Les Ecrans du Large
Credit:Observatoire des armes – Lyon, France
In the spring of 1960, most of the constructions planned for the CSEM were completed, comprising 82,000m2 of buildings, 7,000m2 of underground works, 100km of roads, a water production of 1,200m3 per day, 4,400kV of power in three power plants, more than 200km of underground cables and pipes, and 7,000m3 of reinforced concrete in the ground zero zones. In the early hours of 13 February 1960, the first bomb was successfully detonated. Codenamed Gerboise Bleue (Blue Jerboa) after a tiny jumping desert rodent, the bomb had a blast capacity of about 60–70kt: roughly four times the strength of Little Boy, the atomic bomb dropped by the United States on Hiroshima in August 1945. Gerboise Bleue was followed by three other bombs: Gerboise Blanche on 1 April 1960, Gerboise Rouge on 27 December, and Gerboise Verte on 25 April 1961. The colours of the four atmospheric bombs could be combined to represent the French flag with blue, white and red, but could also euphemistically form the Algerian flag with white, red and green. However, displaying an Algerian flag in the streets and public spaces of colonised Algeria was then prohibited.
Following the detonation of the four atmospheric atomic bombs, the French colonial authorities were legally compelled to move their testing underground. To this end, the French army secretly built the Centre d’Expérimentations Militaires des Oasis (CEMO, or the Centre of Military Tests of Oases) in In Eker, about 600km south-east of Reggane, for approximately 2,000 civil CEA employees and military officials, and selected the mountain of Taourirt Tan Afella as a firing mountain. The CEMO comprised a living base called Camp Saint-Laurent in northern In Amguel, near Oued Takormiasse, 35km south of In Eker. It also included an airbase located 15km north of In Amguel, an advanced camp (OASIS I) at the foot of the eastern flank of the Taourirt Tan Afella mountain for miners and Direction des Applications Militaires (DAM) personnel, and an additional advanced base (OASIS II). At the CEMO, 13 underground nuclear bombs were detonated.
Upon completion of the Gerboise series, France relocated to In Eker and carried out underground testing. Bombs were placed at the extremity of a dead-end spiral, and after the explosion the tunnel was intended to close on itself to contain its fallout
But on 1 May 1962, a radioactive cloud escaped from the firing tunnel. To this day, the Béryl accident remains largely unacknowledged by the French state
Credit: Apic / Getty
The firing of underground atomic bombs took place at the bottom of tunnels dug horizontally into the rock of the Hoggar Mountains, the total length of which was about one kilometre. The so-called galerie de tir (firing tunnel) ended in a spiral so that the mechanical effect of the firing on the rock caused the tunnel to close. A concrete stopper then locked the entrance of the gallery, and safety doors were built at intervals to reduce the venting of radioactive gases. Recesses were placed along the sides of the tunnel, into which a number of measuring and recording instruments were positioned. According to the French Office Parlementaire d’Évaluation des Choix Scientifiques et Technologiques (Parliamentary Office for the Evaluation of Scientific and Technological Choices), these techniques were inspired by the United States’ experiments in the Nevada desert.
Codenamed after gemstones, the French colonial regime detonated Agathe, Béryl, Émeraude, Améthyste, Rubis, Opale, Topaze, Turquoise, Saphir, Jade, Corindon, Tourmaline and Grenat in Taourirt Tan Afella between November 1961 and February 1966; the yield of these atomic bombs ranged between five and 150kt. In addition, the CEA carried out five atomic tests called expériences complémentaires (complementary experiments) in Taourirt Tan Ataram between 1964 and 1966. However, the explosions of Béryl, Améthyste, Rubis and Jade were not fully contained. Detonated two months before the celebration of Algeria’s independence from France, Béryl caused the most perilous accident of the four, significantly exposing nearby sedentary and nomadic populations and civil and military personnel to highly hazardous radiation levels and further contaminating the natural environment. In his 2011 book Les Irradiés de Béryl: L’Essai Nucléaire Français Non Contrôlé, published 49 years after the accident, Louis Bulidon, a French chemical engineer who witnessed the disaster, writes that ‘the State, the Army, and their institutions in charge of nuclear affairs … dare to pretend to this day that nothing, or little, happened on 1 May 1962 in In Eker.’
In 1999, dose rates were evaluated in the area contaminated by the Béryl accident, extrapolated from measurements performed in 1965
The region remains heavily polluted today. The French government has repeatedly been called upon to assume its responsibilities, reveal where the nuclear waste is buried, work on the site’s decontamination and provide compensation
Credit: Reuters / Alamy
When strong winds bring large swathes of dust and sand from the Sahara to Europe, as happened earlier this year, French cities and landscapes are engulfed in vivid and eerie orange colours containing traces of nuclear radiation
Credit: KONRAD K / SIPA / Shutterstock
Today, these nuclear affairs are still classified, but the Saharan radioactive landscapes that the detonations generated are no secret. The documentaries Vent de Sable and L’Algérie, De Gaulle et La Bombe directed by Larbi Benchiha in 2008 and 2010 respectively, and AT(H)OME directed by Elisabeth Leuvrey in 2013, portray the spatial, environmental, social and health effects of France’s atmospheric and underground nuclear bombs in the Sahara. The filmmakers depict the irreversible contamination of Saharan environments and lives. They testify to the human-made transformation of the sand and stone, as well as the deformation of materials used to build the nuclear military bases. They uncovered contaminated matter and exposed the circulation of the toxic remains of France’s nuclear explosions. They rendered the temporality of French colonisation of Algeria in the present, condemning France for not taking care of the nuclear waste that it produced.
France is legally responsible for the decontamination of its former nuclear bases and atomic firing fields in the Sahara. The 1995 resolution of the General Conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) calls on all states ‘to fulfil their responsibilities to ensure that sites where nuclear tests have been conducted are monitored scrupulously and to take appropriate steps to avoid adverse impacts on health, safety and the environment as a consequence of nuclear testing’. Any decontamination is yet to occur. The Algerian government and the international community have still not pressured the French government to fulfil its responsibilities. In his 2014 article ‘Essais Nucléaires Français: À Quand une Véritable Transparence?’ (French Nuclear Tests: When Will There Be Real Transparency?), Bruno Barrillot, winner of the 2010 Nuclear-Free Future Award and co-founder of the Observatoire des Armements, denounced the French government’s ambiguity towards its nuclear bombs and their toxic effects in the Algerian Sahara. He asked: ‘Is it not time now for complete transparency and for the French government to begin negotiations with the Algerian government on this painful page of the history of French-Algerian relations to agree on concrete actions of “rehabilitation” and “reparation”?’ In the name of social, environmental and spatial justice, it is indeed time for both rehabilitation and reparation.
