Nuclear Test by France Stirs Global Anger : Weapons: Scientists who conducted experiment call it a success, with no release of radiation. New Zealand, Chile recall envoys to Paris.

Protests against France’s renewed atomic testing spread Wednesday with vigor, including worldwide denunciations, street demonstrations and ambassador recalls, even as the country’s nuclear scientists began preparations in the South Pacific for a second detonation.

At the site of Tuesday’s underground blast, on tiny Mururoa atoll in French Polynesia, French engineers declared the first test a success, with no release of radiation. No date for a second test was given, but experts said it will take at least three weeks before another is ready.

Alain Barthoux, test director for France’s Atomic Energy Commission, told a news conference on the atoll that “the test went perfectly well,” though examining the results will take months.

“The first indications we have picked up have showed only what we expected,” Barthoux said. “I can say that the nuclear test did not have a significant effect on the environment. We are in total control of the environment [of the lagoon].”

The blast, the equivalent of less than 20,000 tons of TNT--the force of the bomb dropped 50 years ago on Hiroshima--ended a 3 1/2-year French moratorium on nuclear tests that had been joined by all of the world’s nuclear powers except China. And it has created a political mushroom cloud over France.

In Paris, nearly 3,000 people joined a protest march Wednesday; other demonstrations were reported from Austria to Australia, with many protesters burning French flags and chaining themselves to fences.

In Papeete, the capital of French Polynesia on Tahiti, about 750 miles northwest of the test site, there was the first violent protest over the nuclear tests.

After hundreds of demonstrators used an earthmover to smash into Papeete’s airport and then set it ablaze, riot police moved in. Protesters slung chains and beat police shields with metal pipes, and officers responded by wielding clubs and spraying tear gas.

Nine people were injured, including two police officers who are in serious condition, the French High Commissioner’s office said.

In Australia, Prime Minister Paul Keating called resumption of the tests “an act of stupidity” and said that “with every test they conduct, the good name of France will be diminished in this part of the world.”

New Zealand Prime Minister Jim Bolger recalled his ambassador from Paris for consultations “as a mark of New Zealand’s outrage.” The government of Chile also recalled its ambassador to France, and Nauru, a small Pacific island nation, suspended diplomatic relations.

A headline in Izvestia, Moscow’s leading newspaper, declared: “Chirac Spat on Everyone,” a reference to French President Jacques Chirac, who announced during the summer that he would resume nuclear testing. About 30 demonstrators held a candlelight vigil outside the French Embassy in Moscow, while the Kremlin, which is abiding by the nuclear test moratorium despite lobbying from its own weapons builders, condemned the French explosion.

French officials stood by their decision to conduct the tests. A spokesman for Chirac said the government was “absolutely firm . . . in carrying out the tests and in supporting the economic and diplomatic interests of France.”

Prime Minister Alain Juppe described the opposition to French nuclear tests as “a little hysterical.” Herve de Charette, the French foreign minister, said that while France “is very attentive to international opinion,” it was “shocked by certain demonstrations.” He cited as examples the presence of Swedish and Japanese government ministers at anti-nuclear demonstrations in Tahiti over the weekend.

Asked about the countries that recalled their ambassadors, De Charette said: “I have no opinion. They should do what they want.”

Chirac has argued that the tests are expected to provide data that will allow France to modernize its nuclear arsenal and lead to computerized simulations. He also has promised to sign a nuclear test ban treaty when the tests are concluded.

But in recent days Chirac has backed away from his original decision to conduct eight tests between now and May. On Tuesday, hours before the first test was conducted, he said French scientists may be able to collect enough information from as few as six tests, and he said the series could be concluded well before May.

The sooner the better for the French government, which has found the tests a serious internal and international diplomatic problem. The left-leaning Paris newspaper Liberation devoted its entire front page Wednesday to a photograph of Chirac distorted to show half his face disfigured as if by radiation.

The controversy has all but drowned out the praise Chirac was receiving just last week for his leadership role in the Bosnian crisis. The nuclear tests and a feeling that the president, preoccupied with his world image, is ignoring domestic economic woes have driven his approval ratings down, from 59% to 39%, since his election in May. That is more than three times the biggest drop in popularity of any other new president since World War II.

To be sure, the French have mixed feelings about the new round of nuclear tests. And that has created a feeling here that Chirac is giving the country a bad image in the rest of the world.

Times staff writer Sonni Efron in Moscow contributed to this report.

* VINTAGE PROTEST: French wine boycotted by anti-nuclear protesters. D1