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A decade after the last nuclear test in the Pacific, islanders are living with
the legacy of atmospheric and underground tests while fighting for compensation
and recognition of radiation-related health problems.
Hundreds of tests were conducted in the Pacific Islands by the United States,
France and Britain between 1946 and 1996.
In the central Pacific, the US conducted more than 100 tests, 67 of them at
Bikini and Enewetak atolls in the Marshall Islands, a group about halfway
between Australia and Hawaii and home to 55,000 people.
Bikini, Enewetak and the nearby Rongelap atolls had to be evacuated due to
fallout, and the Bikini and Rongolap islanders are yet to return home.
France started its Pacific testing program in 1966, holding 193 tests at Mururoa
and nearby Fangataufa atolls in French Polynesia. The first 41 were atmospheric
but testing was moved underground in 1975. There were 152 underground blasts
before testing stopped altogether in 1996.
The biggest problems so far have arisen in the Marshall Islands where the
atmospheric nuclear tests by the US were ``dirtier and much bigger'' than the
French tests, according to journalist and author David Robie.
The Marshall Islands Nuclear Claims Tribunal says the Marshall Islands tests
comprised only 14 percent of all US nuclear tests but accounted for 80 percent
of the nuclear yield or fallout of all US atmospheric tests. AGENCE
FRANCE-PRESSE
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