Three Block-houses At Site

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31098, 29 June 1966, Page 17

Three Block-houses At Site

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) !PAPEETE (Tahiti), June 28. France opened her Pacific nuclear test site yesterday to journalists at the island where a bomb tower stands jutting out of the blue lagoon. A press party arranged to visit the forward base at Hao, 500 miles from Tahiti, and the actual test island of Mururoa, 450 miles farther to the south-east. The first test is expected in the first day or two of July, and a final warning to aircraft and shipping to keep clear of the test area has been given.

Three Block-Houses The Mururoa site has three massive concrete block-houses designed to withstand the nuclear blasts and containing equipment to relay the detonator signals out to the bombdevices and record the results. One of these buildings has provisions for three men to live sealed off from the outside world for up to four I days. But it is a tightly- | guarded secret whether it will be occupied during the com- ! ing tests. i Reports say the first explosion is to be of a plutonium device on the surface. There ; would be others under water and in the air. The programme also includes the testI ing of a trigger-device for a [future A-bomb, these reports I said. The signal for the first explosion will come from the cruiser De Grasse. It will be retransmitted i from the block-house relay station by a coaxial cable. The cable will send back an impulse indicating the intens-

ity of the blast before it melts a split second later. The concluding “boosted” nuclear test may be watched by President de Gaulle, who will be visiting French Polynesia in the first half of September. One mystery which none of the official announcements has done anything to dispel is the future of the tiny atoll of Fangataufa, about 30 miles away from Mururoa. Work on the island has been top-secret and the journalists’ trip will not include it. But rumour has it that Fangataufa will be the site of an eventual French

hydrogen bomb explosion. The bustle and prosperity the nuclear programme has brought to French Polynesia —125 islands scattered over an area the size of Europe—has not removed resentment at the tests among the 85,000 inhabitants. Even the Assembly President, Mr Jacques Tauraa, who headed the session which agreed to the tests three years ago, has said he is disturbed over possible consequences. But he added that he has accepted assurances from France that there will be no radioactive danger during the tests.