Word: mururoa
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Thumbing its nose at near-unanimous international condemnation, France set off a third nuclear blast beneath the Mururoa Atoll in French Polynesia about 6 p.m. ET. "This test was necessary to guarantee in the future the security and reliability of our arms," the French Defense Ministry said in a statement. French President Jacques Chirac has promised to sign a global test ban treaty, but only after all eight planned tests have occurred...
...conflict between old-line "radicals" and new-style "suits" has erupted openly in recent months as Greenpeace has suffered one public debacle after another. In the latest, activists sailed into the waters off Mururoa atoll early last month in a futile effort to get the French to halt resumption of nuclear-test blasts in the Pacific. But the protesters blundered into a trap, allowing the French navy to seize two vessels--the flagship Rainbow Warrior II and, more significantly, the group's largest support ship, MV Greenpeace. French authorities impounded a third protest vessel a few days before setting...
...WONDER IF THE FRENCH SHOULDN'T just be left to their own devices. After all, the Mururoa area appears seismically stable, and the explosion is deep enough to guarantee safety. Will long-term radiation leaks result? Whatever is strong enough to bring radiation to the surface is surely cataclysmic enough to make it superfluous! MATHEW CLARK Roodepoort, South Africa
...able to explode the bomb with very little resistance," reports TIME's James Geary. Hours before the explosion, a blast more than five times as powerful as the one that levelled Hiroshima, the French seized another Greenpeace vessel, the fourth since the tests began last month at the Mururoa Atoll. The strong international protests that marked the first test were also absent this time, with Japan, Russia, the United States and the European Commission merely expressing "regret." In Papeete, the site of fierce rioting after the earlier test, the streets were calm. France restated its intention to sign a nuclear...
Dave McTaggart, 63, sailed his boat the Vega into the exclusion zone in 1972 and '73, and was almost beaten to death by the French. Now he's returned with the Vega. Yes, he says, Greenpeace will stay on at Mururoa. He answers the radiophone. "Look," he says to someone in Papeete, "I need to know exactly which of those parliamentarians is prepared to violate the zone. Yeah, yeah, call me tomorrow...