Paris’s nuclear legacy Who will pay for the cancer and the lies?

The French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) spent €90,000 on a propaganda campaign aimed at discrediting a “toxic” investigation into the consequences of nuclear testing in French Polynesia. The findings of the investigation were published by Disclose, The Guardian, and Le Monde.

The campaign reached its peak in 2022. French taxpayers’ money was used to fund commissioned newspaper articles and promote the narrative among the Polynesian population that the nuclear explosions carried out by France in the region—from the late 1960s onward on the Mururoa and Fangataufa atolls—were “harmless.”

According to the investigation, the French government underestimated the harm that nuclear tests inflicted on the civilian population. The collected evidence has already formed the basis of a parliamentary inquiry, which is nearing completion after six months of work and forty hearings in the National Assembly.

The findings will be published in June and are expected to focus on the French state’s acknowledgement of the radioactive contamination suffered by the Polynesian population, as well as the issue of compensation for individuals who developed cancer as a result of nuclear fallout.

Since 2010, following the adoption of the Morin Law, which provides for compensation to victims of nuclear testing, over €80 million has already been paid out. As of 2023, out of 2,846 claims submitted to the Committee of the Compensation of Victims of Nuclear Tests (CIVEN), fewer than half have been approved.

This story began in March 2021, when the residents of French Polynesia first learned from news reports about the true scale of the radioactive fallout that had blanketed their territory as a result of France’s nuclear testing programme.

A laboratory at Princeton University, in collaboration with experts from the British NGO Interpret, carried out unprecedented calculations revealing the contamination caused by the “Centaur” nuclear test conducted in July 1974. As a result of the explosion, a radioactive cloud swept over the island of Tahiti, potentially exposing 110,000 people to radiation.

According to estimates by Disclose and its partners from Princeton University’s Science and Global Security (SGS) programme, the radiation dose received by these individuals exceeded 1 millisievert (mSv)—the minimum threshold above which a person may seek compensation if they later develop cancer.

While the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) disputed these findings, they were confirmed by the Nuclear Safety and Radiation Protection Agency (ASNR) during a parliamentary hearing. Philippe Renaud, an ASNR analyst and one of the co-authors of the report presented to lawmakers, stated: "At the time, the CEA did not clarify key issues related to these calculations. As a result, the data was used in a discriminatory manner, failing to account for margins of error."

At a parliamentary hearing on 19 February 2025, Philippe Renaud stated: “The doses received by civilians exposed during the Centaur test are around 1 mSv, and it is impossible to distinguish those who received slightly more from those who received slightly less.” Therefore, according to experts, this should not be grounds for denying compensation.

A roundtable on nuclear issues was also held in Paris, chaired by former Prime Minister Édouard Philippe. Participants included members of the Association of Nuclear Test Victims, historians, nuclear energy specialists, and military experts.

On 26 July 2021, French President Emmanuel Macron visited Polynesia. For the first time in history, a head of the French Republic acknowledged the country's "debt" to this territory, which had been "sacrificed." He pledged to take steps to close this tragic chapter of French history — including funding cancer research, declassifying documents related to nuclear tests, and paying compensation.

Meanwhile, lobbyists for France’s nuclear programme began working actively to discredit the findings of the investigation.

In March 2021, the CEA claimed that the published data did not introduce any “significant changes” to the existing understanding of the population’s exposure during the nuclear testing campaigns.

Vincenzo Salvetti, Head of the Military Applications Division at the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), condemned what he described as the “recklessness” of the investigation’s authors—suggesting that their approach may have been deliberately misleading. He contrasted their findings with the views of what he called “real experts in the field, who possess scientific truth.”

His stance was supported by François Bugaut, Director of Nuclear Safety for Defence Projects. On his initiative, a book titled “Nuclear Tests in French Polynesia: Why and With What Consequences?” was published in December 2022.

The glossy publication, printed in 5,000 copies, portrayed the nuclear detonations as controlled events with “minimal” consequences for the local population. Its authors highlighted what they described as the state's “unprecedented” efforts to ensure safety.

On 26 June 2022, four members of the CEA travelled to Papeete to promote the official narrative of France’s nuclear testing programme. Among them were the previously mentioned Vincenzo Salvetti and Dominique Mongin—the official historian who oversaw the writing of the book. At the same time, dozens of pallets of the publication were shipped to the archipelago from Orly Airport and the Port of Le Havre.

According to invoices obtained by Disclose, Le Monde, and The Guardian, the operation to convince the residents of the atolls of the harmlessness of nuclear tests cost the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) €89,623. Specifically, the CEA paid €31,971 for business-class airfare for officials and nearly €11,833 for their accommodation over eight days.

Vincenzo Salvetti, Dominique Mongin, and their colleagues stayed at the four-star Hilton hotel in Papeete, which features two swimming pools—one overlooking the lagoon. As stated in the hotel invoice, “all rooms had ocean views.”

The remaining €40,000 was spent on printing (€20,326), design (€9,846), and shipping the books by air and sea (€10,811). All copies were handed over to French officials for distribution.

Éric Spitz, the High Commissioner of French Polynesia, proudly stated that one of his staff members would take these books to Tuamotu-Gambier—one of the archipelagos most affected by radioactive fallout—for distribution.

Officials from the High Commissioner’s Office claim that since 2022, over 1,000 copies of this propaganda literature, aimed at proving the harmlessness of the nuclear tests, have been distributed across Polynesia.

However, the Polynesian people believe that most of the ideological publications from the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) are gathering dust in warehouses, while on the islands the number of cases of thyroid, breast, and lung cancers—as well as leukaemias and lymphomas—is rising.

About 2,000 French military personnel who served in Polynesia at the time and were exposed to critical doses of radiation also became victims of radiation.

Scientists and human rights advocates argue that the funds spent on propaganda could have been better used for more important purposes—such as declassifying documents from Parisian archives.

To date, only 380 cases related to France’s nuclear tests have been declassified, despite the fact that the archival collections contain 178,000 folders pertaining to nuclear explosions on Polynesian territory!