Remnants of the testing infrastructure on Moruroa atoll Photo: AFP
A French Polynesian opposition politician says he will ask the French president Emmanuel Macron that the former French nuclear weapons test site at Moruroa be cleaned up.
Moetai Brotherson, who is a member of both the French National Assembly and the French Polynesian assembly, already put his request in a letter to the French prime minister as well as the ministers for defence, health and the environment.
Mr Brotherson asked that radioactive substances left behind be removed amid concern that the atoll could collapse as result of the more than 140 underground nuclear weapons tests.
He told local media that he was about to go to Paris and would ensure his letter would be delivered to Mr Macron after failing to get an answer from any of the ministers approached last year.
Mr Macron is due in Tahiti in April and will chair a global environmental conference, the One Planet Summit.
Last year, Mr Brotherson said he doubted that the ministers would reply, suggesting that France might say it lacked either the technology or the financial means to remove radioactive sediments.
He also said the cracks on Moruroa are a concern which might explain why France's biggest investment in the region is the $US100 million Telsite monitoring system at Moruroa.
Although France stopped its weapons tests in 1996, it has refused to return the excised atoll to French Polynesia and declared it a no-go zone.
In 2018, the pro-independence opposition announced that it had taken all living French presidents to the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity over the weapons testing.
The move was supported by the Maohi Protestant Church which said while knowing of the impact of nuclear testing before 1963, France still proceeded with it in French Polynesia.
Moetai Brotherson, who is a member of both the French National Assembly and the French Polynesian assembly. Photo: RNZ Pacific / Walter Zweifel