ACCEPTING THE UNACCEPTABLE

Synopsis

Between the first test in 1966 at Mururoa and the first H-bomb explosion in 1968 at Fangataufa, French nuclear power was built in Polynesia.

While these tests and their consequences have been widely documented, what happened before is much less so, particularly how General de Gaulle convinced the Polynesians to accept these experiments.

The arrival of German researchers after the Second World War and the consequences of the Algerian War and the Cold War helped make France a nuclear power thanks to these Polynesian atolls (after some initial tests in Algeria).