Physicians question Mururoa study

Press, 22 October 1983, Page 8

Physicians question Mururoa study

Little will be achieved by a four-day scientific study of the Mururoa Atoll, according to the New Zealand branch of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War.

the Mururoa team, led by the director of the National Radiation Laboratory, Mr Hugh Atkinson, has been given permission by the French Government to stay on the atoll from October 25 to 29.

It is an improvement on the one day and one night visit threatened in August but the physicians’ group believes that it is still too short. The most recent investigation of the effects of nuclear testing at Mururoa

was conducted in August last year by a team of French scientists led by a volcanologist, Dr Haroun Tazief.

Their report had confirmed information from unofficial sources that inadequate records were being kept and that there was “a legacy of serious nuclear accidents on the atoll,” the group said. It had also recommended that a long mission be undertaken, to cover radiation monitoring, food chain sampling, structural impact, waste dumping, and health statistics.

The team had found that plutonium waste had been disturbed by a storm in March, 1981. The amount misplaced had not 'been

measured and there was some risk to marine life and personnel on the atoll. The physicians group said that “a proper health study” should be mounted and that further short trips would only serve to delay a thorough investigation of the effects of the weaponstesting programme. “We understand that the French have spent the last two months not testing as usual for this time of year, but clearing up the atoll in preparation for this visit," it said.

Radiation and its health effects would be found “only by those qualified, using sound scientific practice, employing objective techniques and being unhurried.”