FRANCE will use the eight nuclear tests it announced last week to design a new improved warhead, according to researchers who keep a watch on weapons development. The official line that France needs to carry out the tests to perfect its computer models of nuclear explosive 鈥� which will eventually replace the tests 鈥� is grossly exaggerated, they say.
The underground tests are planned to take place between September and May at the Mururoa atoll in French Polyesia, about 1200 kilometres from Tahiti (see Map). The decision to explode the devices, announced last week by President Jacques Chirac, has outraged Pacific countries and provoked boycotts of French products in Australia and New Zealand.
Chirac claims that the tests are needed to ensure the 鈥渟afety, security and reliability鈥� of France鈥檚 nuclear deterrent and to help it develop a system for simulating nuclear tests in the laboratory. He says that after the tests, France will sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty 鈥渨ithout reserve鈥� in autumn 1996. With the exception of China, the nuclear powers have observed a moratorium on testing since 1992.
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Prime Minister Alain Jupp茅 says the tests are not aimed at making a new type of weapon. But Christopher Paine, senior researcher at the Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington DC is not convinced. 鈥淲hy the French need to do the tests and why they say they need to do them are two different things,鈥� he says.
Last year, Paine visited Paris as a member of a team investigating France鈥檚 attitude to nuclear testing. The team uncovered official concerns over the longterm reliability of the warhead installed in its submarine-launched ballistic missiles. Paine and other scientists monitoring nuclear arms say France will use the explosions to test a more robust design of warhead. Marc Launois, deputy director of the military applications division of France鈥檚 Atomic Energy Commission, says only that the tests will be used to 鈥減erfect鈥� French weapons.
Chirac鈥檚 mention of laboratory simulations refers to a planned 10 billion-franc (拢1.4 billion) programme, called PALEN. This will include a giant laser, called Megajoule, which will be built near Bordeaux and should be ready by 2003. Weapons scientists can use lasers to recreate the conditions at the heart of a thermonuclear explosion. They train the beams of light on frozen pellets of hydrogen, forcing the pellets to implode and the hydrogen nuclei to fuse. The results will help to build computer models of nuclear blasts.
But Paine says French officials have 鈥渧astly overstated鈥� the need for more tests to design simulation methods. Patricia Lewis, director of the Verification Technology Information Centre in London, goes further. She says the French need no more tests because they could simply use models developed by the US and apply them to data collected during past tests.
But Launois argues that insufficient data were collected at earlier tests. Cooperation with the US and Britain would lead to a 鈥渓oss of freedom and competence鈥�, he says. 鈥淔rance has always jealously guarded its nuclear independence.鈥�
Lewis says that compared with the US and Britain, France has 鈥渘ot done a good job on using simulation鈥�. By employing computers during design work, Britain has needed between 5 and 7 tests for every type of warhead it developed, she says, while France has needed between 13 and 20.