Countywide : Group Decries French Nuclear Tests

A group opposed to nuclear testing will send a peace delegation to Tahiti in January to protest France’s detonation of bombs in the South Pacific, its founder said Thursday.

“The devastation that these tests have caused is much worse than we’ve been hearing,” said Judy Hoyt, a Corona del Mar woman who founded Women Against Nuclear Testing. “Since we share the Pacific Ocean, what is going on there affects us. It affects the fish, the air and the water.”

France exploded a nuclear bomb on Mururoa Atoll, 700 miles northwest of Tahiti, in September, ending a 3 1/2-year testing moratorium honored by all of the world’s nuclear powers except China. The underground blast was the equivalent of nearly 20,000 tons of TNT, the force of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.

A second bomb, about five times larger than the first, was detonated on Fangataufa Atoll in early October. Four more tests are planned this year, Hoyt said.

Though French officials say that the tests have no significant effect on the environment, New Zealand seismologists have estimated that the second blast produced a shock wave equal to a 5.9-magnitude earthquake.

Watching the explosion of the second bomb on television, Hoyt said, was shocking. “I nearly got sick to my stomach seeing the water turn platinum and then start to vibrate. Then it started changing color really fast. Green, blue and gray,” she said. “You know there has to be some effect.”

The tests have drawn worldwide protest and sparked two days of rioting in Papeete, the capital of French Polynesia. The governments of New Zealand and Chile recalled their ambassadors to France in protest, and the Clinton Administration condemned the tests.

Hoyt said at a news conference Thursday that about 100 women have signed up for the four-day peace mission to Tahiti. The group, which men may join, will travel to Papeete to meet with New Zealanders who began a peace garden there several weeks ago.

Ladawna Howard of Greenpeace was at the news conference, held on a bluff in Corona del Mar, to express support for Hoyt’s mission.

Hoyt, 48, said she started Women Against Nuclear Testing with future generations in mind.

“I wanted to do something to make people realize what is happening,” she said as her daughter, Heidi, and her granddaughter, Ashley, listened nearby. “This isn’t just about me, it’s about wanting my granddaughter to have a safe ocean to play in.”