A new window into France’s nuclear history
Posted: 19th September 2022
By Austin R. Cooper | September 16, 2022
In
1961, the French military propaganda magazine Le Bled photographed French soldiers cooking in the Algerian Sahara, near the Reggane nuclear test site. ©Unknown photographer/Collection BLED/ECPAD/Défense/BLED 61-271-6
Access to French nuclear archives has increased dramatically during the past year. Since October 2021, French officials have declassified thousands of documents about the development of French nuclear weapons, an arsenal of roughly 300 warheads today.
This work marks a sea change in France, for decades one of the most difficult nuclear-armed democracies to study. Unlike the United States and the United Kingdom, France does not have Freedom of Information laws, which allow the public to file declassification requests. French archives do consider special access requests (dérogations), but these requests cannot compel a declassification review, which limits their utility in making nuclear weapons documents available for research.