Word: mururoa
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...blast was over in a nanosecond, causing no more visible effects than the momentary frothing and churning of the turquoise waters around Mururoa atoll. But the political aftershocks from France's decision to test a small nuclear device in the South Pacific last Tuesday continued to reverberate around the world long after the waves had calmed...
...South Pacific, the controversy took on the trappings of a naval battle as the militant environmental organization Greenpeace and a 25-boat "peace flotilla" approached the Mururoa test site. Four days before the blast, after Greenpeace penetrated a 12-mile security zone, black-suited French navy commandos boarded and commandeered the two lead vessels, signaling Paris' determination to go ahead with the tests--despite the inevitable global backlash...
...convincing, French scientists--and others--have largely refuted the notion that the underground experiments pose any immediate environmental threat. Since 1982 at least five expert studies--including one by antinuclear marine biologist Jacques Cousteau and one by the International Atomic Energy Agency-- concluded that France's Pacific tests at Mururoa and nearby Fangataufa atoll, conducted from 1966 to 1992, had caused no radioactive contamination and no significant ecological impact...
Nearing 1 a.m., Sunday, Sept. 3., just beyond the French navy's 12-mile exclusion zone at Mururoa, the South Pacific atoll where France plans to test nuclear bombs. Light wind. Half-moon. Waves from a far-off storm swell under La Rebaude, a broken-engined, radio-dead ketch owned by Greenpeace. The crew hands two black-painted sea kayaks over the rail. They are then tethered to a Zodiac inflatable boat already pitching in the water...
...Spanish Foreign Legion and the University of Hertfordshire, where he studies literature. The two men, both British, carry green fatigues in waterproof bags. They have short haircuts. Whiting, burly, with a broken nose, speaks fluent rough-and-tumble French that he learned in the legion while serving on Mururoa. Baker, a lean, hard mountain climber with a seen-better, seen-worse expression, speaks nothing but rich, working-class Sussex. Someone says, "Cheers," Baker revs the outboard and the little inflatable, low in the water, rocks away on the swell, towing the kayaks toward Mururoa. The air is still...