'Working on the Atomic Bomb' by Margot JONCKHEERE RUIZ

My grandfather is 88 years old now. Before, when he was young he worked in the Navy. When he wanted to leave his job, he was hired by the CEA. It's the “Atomic Energy Commission”, he was in the department of military application. He was hired to be in charge of automatic telephone in the Sahara, in Reganne. It's located in the south of Sahara.

But there was no job in telecommunications for him over there. This happened in 1960: finally he participated and attended the first French test firing of a nuclear bomb at night. It represented eight times Hiroshima. My grandfather was in the firing console during the explosion. The firing console is a “big table” where the operators could stop the bomb or launch it. It was situated between 10 and 15 kilometers from the launch site. The firing was launched from a tower 100 meters high. He explained that once, he saw in real one of this test fired outside the firing console: it was really awesome! He worked here without preparation and training. But this place was more and more contaminated by these atomic bombs and he had to leave this site, two years later. The firing was made at air level and also at ground level. He went later to Hoggar in Algeria: there is a plateau at an altitude of 1000 meters called Tan Affela. There were tunnels in this mountain where they made underground tests. At this time, there was the Algerian War of Independence, so the company had to pay the FLN to pass because all the military convoys were attacked.

In 1962 or 1963, he went to Tahiti, to Mururoa where he participated in drilling. They descended containers which contained nuclear bombs. My grandfather had to make the orientation of these drilling if it deviates. He had to collect the information of the explosion by steps and calculations. All these missions were in secret. He wasn't allowed to speak about his job. There was a lot of spying, and members of the family or relatives were checked to find if there was a member of the French Communist Party or any connections with Communism: he would have lost his job.

This work allowed my grandfather to travel, but it was really difficult because of the distance with the family.