France 'hid atomic bomb risks' to Spain and Italy
France 'hid atomic bomb risks' to Spain and Italy
New declassified documents shows France covered up the extent of the nuclear fallout unleashed by its first atomic bomb test in North Africa, campaigners told The Local on Friday. In fact, cancer-causing particles from the bomb made it as far as Spain and Italy.
A recently declassified military map shows, contrary to what French officials said at the time, the 1960 detonation in the Algerian desert sent radioactive particles to the Italian island of Sicily and the the southern Spanish coast within weeks of the blast, French daily Le Parisien revealed.
The cancer-causing particles can remain undetected in the body for years, even decades.
This bomb, nicknamed 'Gerboise Bleue' (Blue Jerboa), was one of 17 that would ultimately take place in the Sahara Desert and Algerian mountains from 1960-66.
http://www.thelocal.fr/20140214/france-lied-about-extent-of-nuclear-fallout