Recently declassified ministry of defence documents have revealed that the French nuclear tests in the South Pacific in the 1960s and 1970s were far more toxic than had been previously acknowledged.
The Guardian reports that those tests had hit a vast swath of Polynesia with radioactive fallout.
According to the report, the plutonium fallout hit the whole of French Polynesia, a much broader area than France had previously admitted.
Tahiti, the most populated island, was exposed to 500 times the maximum accepted levels of radiation. The impact spread as far as the tourist island, Bora Bora.
Thousands of angered veterans, families and civilians still fighting for compensation over health issues have insisted France to reveal the full truth about the notorious tests whose impact was kept secret for decades.
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France has argued for decades that the controlled Mururoa explosions were clean. Former French President Jacques Chirac had controversially resumed nuclear atoll explosions in the South Pacific shortly after being elected in 1995.
Bruno Barillot, who investigated the impacts of the nuclear tests for the Polynesian government said that levels of thyroid cancers and leukaemia in Polynesia were on the rise.
He further added that Tahiti had literally been showered with plutonium for two days during the Mururoa test.
France lately acknowledged that there could be a compensation process for veterans and civilians limiting it to a small geographical area and certain ailments.
Only 11 people out of 1,50,000 workers and residents, including 127,000 in Polynesia, have received compensation.
Lack of precautionary measures and forcible policies lead to such large scale destruction, the report said.
