France used the Algerian Sahara to carry out its first nuclear tests. A choice that irritates the very young Algerian state, whose independence dates from July 5, 1962.
The highest French officials, including the President of the Republic Charles de Gaulle, considered carrying out atmospheric nuclear tests in the Algerian Sahara after the independence of the former colony in 1962. These projects, described in documents recently released available to the public, have never been completed. Otherwise, they would have contradicted the will expressed on several occasions by the first Algerian president Ahmed Ben Bella and his government, opposed to atmospheric nuclear tests in their country and in the world.
Publication of the book Toxic (2021), by physicist Sébastien Phillipe and investigative journalist Tomas Statius, recently highlighted the health and environmental risks resulting from the development of the French nuclear arsenal. Their analyzes revealed that the extent of radioactive contamination in Polynesia, where France carried out nearly two hundred atmospheric and underground nuclear explosions between 1966 and 1996, had been far greater than authorities had been willing to admit.
These revelations, as well as the holding of a round table bringing together members of Polynesian civil society, had led to the opening of a unprecedented process of declassification of French archivesOn decision of President Emmanuel Macron. The importance for the right of victims to compensation, a right established by the French Parliament since 2010, raises questions about secrecy – particularly nuclear – in a democracy.
The publication in May of Bombs in Polynesia, commission of the government of French Polynesia led by historians Renaud Meltz and Alexis Vrignon, extends the public's attention to the Pacific. Although most of the recent French declassifications also relate to Polynesia, certain documents give the opportunity to question the nuclear dimensions of Algerian independence, during its 60e birthday.
The Algerian Sahara, the first French test site
Between 1960 and 1966, France carried out its first nuclear tests in the Saharan desert, 17 in all including 4 in the atmosphere. These nuclear issues interacted with the War of Independence (1954-62), as explained historian Roxanne Panchasi, then with the construction of the new Algerian state. French explosions in Algeria are now the subject of work Literary, architectural et militants.
Four aerial tests took place at the Reggane site, before France switched to underground tests at the In Ekker site from 1961. These underground tests, designed to prevent the escape of radioactive fallout produced by the explosion, will not always achieve this goal. Four underground tests in the Algerian Sahara “ were not totally contained or confined ».
The Evian Accords, guarantees of a ceasefire in Algeria in 1962, ensured France the right to use the two nuclear sites for five years. At least, according to the French interpretation: several Algerian decision-makers disputed it. This document did not include any provision prohibiting the resumption of aerial tests on Algerian territory. But, in fact, France took them back only in 1966, in Polynesia.
The weaving of bilateral relations, from the Evian negotiations, allowed the leaders of the new Algerian state to challenge the most harmful French nuclear projects.
French spillovers and African borders
The French choice to move on to underground tests, from December 1961, was not final. Why was a return to the atmosphere worrying? After the first French explosion in 1960, radioactive fallout arrived, to the great surprise of France and its allies, over the independent Ghana of Kwame Nkrumah and Nigeria, a British colony on the verge of gaining independence.
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These two governments, as explained separately by historians Abena Dove Osseo-Asare et Christopher Hill, had worked hard to measure the traces left by the French radioactive clouds on their territory. Other neighboring states, such as Tunisia, had turned to the International Atomic Energy Agency (AEIA), then to the United States, in order to also participate in these measures. They were looking for scientific evidence of French violations of their sovereignty.
But despite these challenges, several senior French officials, including Charles de Gaulle, wanted to retain the possibility of carrying out tests on the Reggane site. At the end of 1961, the military authorities refused to modify the air traffic rules above the site, preferring to keep those put in place during the tests, on the grounds that it was then .
In May 1963, the first Algerian President Ahmed Ben Bella began to grow impatient with France's refusal to cease its nuclear activities in Algeria. For Ben Bella, this is about the legitimacy of his national mandate and its foreign policy, both being based on its autonomy from Paris. Addressing Jean de Broglie, Secretary of State for Algerian Affairs, he asked him if France could speed up its withdrawal from the Reggane site, considering that it no longer had any use for it. De Broglie refuses to commit: "studies" would still have to be done to determine if it is really possible to accelerate this withdrawal.
Ahmed Ben Bella will make the same request at least twice in 1963 to the French ambassador in Algeria, Georges Gorse, who will confirm to him the French will to keep this site for a few more years. The French choice to keep the Reggane site, and the possibility of a resumption of aerial tests, seriously worried the Algerian president, who strongly supported the Moscow treaty for the partial ban on nuclear tests (1963), including France was not a signatory.
A fifth atmospheric shot? The French desire to reactivate Reggane
Several documents from the declassified archives make it possible to affirm that, despite Algerian protests, French leaders were probably preparing to carry out a new atmospheric test on the Reggane site during the year 1964.
The general John Thiry, responsible for the French nuclear test sites from 1963 to 1969, evokes in the spring of 1963, designating the firing zone next to Reggane. Thiry and other senior French military officials were concerned about French capabilities to carry out underground tests after the famous Beryl accident in 1962. The radioactive leaks from the poorly contained shot had contaminated the ministers Pierre Messmer and Gaston Palewski, French soldiers and Algerian residents.
Thiry was not the only one talking about it. In March 1963, Brigadier General Plenier, of the Engineers, mentioned . If he knows that "this shot is planned", he notes that his work "depends on data not yet fixed on the conditions of the shot" such as location or altitude. On March 29, 1963, it was the turn of Major General Labouerie, Inspector of Engineering, to rejoice: Thus, at least three soldiers at the heart of the French nuclear program were impatiently awaiting the reactivation of the Reggane site.
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There will finally be no test in 1964. During his meeting with Charles de Gaulle at the castle of Champs-sur-Marne, in May 1964, Ahmed Ben Bella had asked the French president not to resume, if possible, the atmospheric tests. De Gaulle had refused to give this guarantee. At the end of 1964, he was still discussing with his advisers the possibility of carrying out atmospheric firing on the Reggane site, growing impatient with the entry into service of the Pacific Experimentation Center in Polynesia.
Although Ahmed Ben Bella's request was finally respected, a senior official of the Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), Jean Viard, nevertheless produced in December 1966 a study on the possibility of reactivating the site – a possibility that he did not consider optimal at the time. However, Charles de Gaulle would have continued to want to keep the site. In a note addressed to the members of his cabinet in February 1967, he asked to study the possibility of maintaining a French presence in Reggane, a site which could only be used, without major work, for atmospheric tests.
The nuclear archives and Algerian independence
Nothing assured the absence of atmospheric nuclear tests in independent Algeria. Recent declassifications reveal French studies for their recovery, despite protests from the highest levels of the new Algerian state. Always shrouded in secrecy, decision-making continued until the French transfer of the two Saharan sites to the Algerian authorities in 1966 and 1967.
Certain archives, notably military and diplomatic funds of the time, remain unavailable for historical research. Glimpses suggest the importance of this episode, of the projects abandoned during bilateral negotiations, for the French military nuclear program, for the new Algerian state and for the relations between these two countries. The new access to the French nuclear archives, despite its shortcomings, is beginning to illuminate the little-known issues of the 60th anniversary of Algerian independence.
Thomas Strawberry, PhD student within the ERC NUCLEAR project, Nuclear Knowledges/CERI, Sciences Po and Austin R. Cooper, Postdoctoral fellow, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
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