[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 121 (Tuesday, July 25, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H7683-H7684]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          FRENCH NUCLEAR TESTS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from American Samoa [Mr. Faleomavaega] is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. FALEOMAVAEGA. Mr. Speaker, once again I take the floor to express 
to my colleagues and to the American people my deep disappointment with 
a decision made recently by the President of the Government of France 
to explode eight nuclear bombs in the South Pacific, and each bomb 
explosion is ten times more powerful than the nuclear bomb dropped on 
the city of Hiroshima.
  Mr. Speaker, I have just learned from media reports that some 47 
parliamentarians from Australia and 11 from New Zealand, and several 
more parliamentarians from Austria, Japan, Denmark and Germany--all 
plan to travel to French Polynesia to protest the proposed nuclear 
testing program by the French Government which will commence in 
September of this year.
  Mr. Speaker, I want to offer my support and commend the 
parliamentarians of all these countries for their commitment and 
convictions to tell the French government leaders that France's 
proposal to explode eight nuclear bombs is just plain wrong
 and contrary to the wishes of some 28 million men, women and children 
who live in this region of the world.

  Mr. Speaker, I also would like to make an appeal to my colleagues to 
join me by traveling to French Polynesia and let the French Government 
know that nuclear testing in the middle of the Pacific Ocean is an 
outmoded, ridiculous, and simply a dangerous undertaking not only for 
the marine environment but the lives of the millions of men, women and 
children who live in the Pacific region.
  Mr. Speaker, the President of France recently proclaimed that France 
was the homeland of the Enlightenment, and I have no doubt that some of 
the world's greatest thinkers--men of reason--men who appreciate and 
value human rights, and who respect the rights of others.
  Mr. Speaker, again I ask--what possible reason is there to justify 
President Chirac's decision to explode eight nuclear bombs? He said in 
the interest of France--but what the concerns and higher interest of 
some 170 nations of the world that recognized the dangers of nuclear 
proliferation--the dangers of nuclear bombs being exploded in an 
environment that changes constantly because of seasons climatic 
conditions that produce earthquakes, hurricanes, cyclones; and another 
real serious danger to these French nuclear explosions, Mr. Speaker, is 
we have no idea what is going on below the base of this volcanic 
formation.
  After some 139 nuclear explosions for the past 20 years inside the 
core of this volcanic formation--something has got to give--and if 
radioactive leakages start coming out of this volcanic formation within 
the next 10 years or even 50 years--my problem, Mr. Speaker, is that 
the 60 million French citizens living in France are going to continue 
enjoying the good things of life like drinking their French wines, 
while the millions of people who live in the Pacific are being 
subjected to radioactive contamination--let alone some 200,000 
Polynesians, Tahitians, who incidentally are also French citizens--all, 
Mr. Speaker, are going to be the victims. Is this fair, Mr. Speaker?
  Can Mr. Chirac honestly look at himself in the mirror--every morning 
and keep saying to himself that it is okay to nuke those islands out 
there in the Pacific, and that the lives of 200,000 French citizens in 
the Pacific are not important to the Government of France? What 
arrogance, Mr. Speaker.
  Mr. Speaker, in the minds of millions of people around the world--the 
Government of France has committed a most grevious error by authorizing 
an additional eight nuclear bomb explosions to take place in certain 
atolls in the South Pacific.
  Mr. Speaker, I would like to make this special appeal to my 
colleagues on both sides of the aisle and to my fellow Americans--make 
your voices heard--support the concerns of the millions of men, women, 
and children in the Pacific and around the world who do not support 
French nuclear tests--call and write letters to the Congress and the 
French Embassy here in Washington, DC--tell the leaders of France that 
exploding 1.2 million tons of TNT in an ocean environment is both 
dangerous, insane, and utter madness.
  Mr. Speaker, tomorrow the House Committee on International Relations 
will consider House Concurrent Resolution 80, which expresses the 
strong sense of the Congress for recognition of the concerns of the 
nations of the Pacific region--a recognition also of the environmental 
problems that will attend these additional nuclear bomb explosions--and 
to call upon the government of France to stop these nuclear tests since 
about 70 percent of the people of France do not want nuclear tests to 
take place, and countries from Asia, the Pacific region, the Western 
Hemisphere, Europe--all do not want France to resume nuclear testings.
  Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues to support House Concurrent 
Resolution 80, which already has the support of Members from both sides 
of the aisle.
  Mr. Speaker, I include the following for the Record:

U.S. Doubts Fuel Fear of Collapse on Nuclear Test Ban--Physicists Meet 
                           to Reinforce Stand

                         (By Charles J. Hanley)

       Weeks before they light the fuse in the far Pacific, the 
     French have set off an explosion of global protest with their 
     plan to resume nuclear weapons testing.
       But the nuclear future may depend less on what happens on a 
     Polynesian island in September than on the outcome of a 
     secretive meeting last week at a California resort, where 
     leading physicists gathered to try to help a wavering U.S. 
     government take a stand on a global test ban.
       These latest developments--a decision in France, indecision 
     in America--have suddenly cast a shadow over international 
     negotiations to conclude a comprehensive test ban treaty by 
     late 1996.
       The Polish chairman of those talks in Geneva sounds 
     worried.
       ``It's possible,'' Ludwik Dembinski said of reaching the 
     goal. ``But it will be very difficult.''
       Fifty years after the first atomic test explosion in New 
     Mexico, on July 16, 1945, the 

[[Page H 7684]]
     nuclear powers have committed themselves to a 1996 target for banning 
     the tests that over the years helped them build ever more 
     compact, durable and finely tuned weapons.
       But after 2,000-plus explosions in the Nevada desert, the 
     central Asian steppes and the Pacific, some want the treaty 
     to allow still more such ``activities''--tests by another 
     name.
       India is key: If it refuses to sign a treaty, its 
     undeclared nuclear-arms program would remain beyond 
     international controls.
       The Clinton administration, split between the military and 
     other U.S. agencies favoring a near-zero threshold, turned 
     for help to the ``Jasons,'' a select group of independent 
     scientists on call to advise the government.
       This panel of ``wise men,'' first organized in 1958, is 
     named after an inventive hero of Greek myth.
       A knowledgeable source, insisting on anonymity, said a 
     half-dozen Jasons--nuclear physicists--met in La Jolla, 
     Calif., last week with government specialists to review the 
     threshold issue.
       Their talks ranged across an arcane realm where 
     milliseconds make the difference between small ``bangs'' and 
     unimaginable explosions.
       In a two-stage thermonuclear bomb, a sphere of non-nuclear
        explosives is ignited and compresses an inner plutonium or 
     uranium core to critical mass, setting off an atom-
     splitting chain reaction. This fission explosion 
     compresses a second component, of light atoms, that fuse 
     and give off heat in an even greater fusion explosion.
       Minimal ``4-pound'' experiments are fission reactions 
     aborted in their first moments. They are useful in weapon 
     safety work--to determine, for example, that accidental 
     ignition of the conventional explosives at only one point on 
     the sphere produces just a small fission yield.
       But Christopher E. Paine of the Natural Resources Defense 
     Council, a Washington-based antinuclear group, says even 
     mini-yield experiments can aid weapons development.
       By stepping up to yields of several hundred tons, the 
     ``experiments'' open many more possibilities for designers, 
     Mr. Paine said.
       For one thing, weapons scientists could monitor the 
     complete fission stage and modify designs as a result.
       A zero-yield treaty would block the plans of U.S., French 
     and other scientists for new bomb types--warheads for earth-
     penetrating weapons, for example, and variable-yield 
     warheads.
       The ultimate recommendation from La Jolla may have been 
     foreshadowed in an unclassified report last year by Jasons 
     who advised against even the smallest-yield tests under a 
     treaty. The safety and reliability of existing weapons can be 
     ensured by non nuclear tests for the foreseeable future, it 
     said.
       The closed-door debates in America are of special interest 
     in Moscow.
       Some in the Russian military complex are looking for 
     reasons to resume testing, said Vladimir Kozin, an arms-
     control specialist at the Russian Foreign Ministry. He said 
     he fears the world will fall back into old habits.
       ``We are on the verge of reviving the arms race.''
       Four declared nuclear powers--the United States, Russia, 
     Britain and France--have observed a test moratorium since 
     1992. Last month, however, the French announced they would 
     stage eight underground explosions at their Mururoa atoll 
     site between September and next May.
       The French say they need the tests to check the safety and 
     reliability of their arsenal and to collect data, before a 
     test ban, for later weapons work via computer simulation. But 
     arms-control advocates say Paris mostly wants to use the 
     tests to complete the design of a new warhead.
       The U.S. government reaffirmed its adherence to the 
     moratorium. But as attention focused on France, things were 
     happening in Washington, too.
       The United States had been expected to favor a test-ban 
     loophole to let elementary weapons work via miniature nuclear 
     blasts underground, with explosive yields equivalent to no 
     more than four pounds of TNT. In late June, however, it 
     emerged that the Pentagon wants a much higher ``threshold''--
     reportedly 500 tons, equivalent to the power of 300 Oklahoma 
     City bombs.
       In meetings last week, Clinton administration officials 
     were trying to settle the U.S. policy dispute. None spoke 
     publicly about the pending decision, but the heat was clearly 
     on.
       ``There's a lot of pressure within the administration to go 
     to a high threshold of several hundred tons,'' said one 
     informed official.
       The heat was felt all the way to Geneva.
       ``Several hundred tons, in my personal view, is certainly 
     not acceptable,'' Mr. Dembinski said in a telephone 
     interview.
       India's delegate to the 38-nation talks was more direct in 
     rejecting the idea of any tests at all.
       A test-ban treaty should mean ``complete cessation of 
     nuclear tests by all states in all environments and for all 
     time,'' Satish Chandra, speaking for the Third World bloc, 
     declared at one Ge-
     

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