Nukewatch Quarterly Spring 2021
Winds from the Sahara Desert blew north over Spain, France, the UK, and Ireland in February, carrying tons of the desert’s dust. The dust, heavy enough in places to tint the sky orange, caused a measurable spike in atmospheric radiation, and after investigating the French Association for Control of Radioactivity in the West (ACRO) announced that the dust is literally radioactive blow back from France’s colonial Cold War-era nuclear bomb tests. In 1960, France began detonating nuclear weapons above- and under-ground in the Algerian Sahara, contaminating local populations, the surrounding desert, and the French troops assigned to the experiments. (It detonated another 193 nuclear weapons on French Polynesia.) ACRO researchers gathered some of the dust from car windshields and its lab analysis found cesium-137, a radioactive isotope not found in nature but produced in great quantities by nuclear weapons blasts. How much was inhaled or ingested across Europe is unknown. ACRO said in a statement, “This radioactive pollution — still observable at long distances 60 years after the nuclear fire — reminds us of … perennial radioactive contamination in the Sahara for which France bears the responsibility.” — Guardian, Mar. 9; IFL Science online (UK), Mar. 4; and Euronews.com, March 1, 2021
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