Question 13228 — work accidents and occupational diseases

Summary

Mr. Pierre-Yves Cadalen draws the attention of the Minister of Armed Forces and Veterans to the situation of former pyrotechnics workers on the Île Longue base. From 1972 to 1996, these workers provided maintenance, upkeep and assembly of nuclear warheads on missiles. They approached these warheads, stationed near them, kept in ignorance of the risks they were running and without the slightest protection against radioactivity. In 2019, as the study carried out by Professor Munoz shows, one in four of these workers had died, with an average age of 62 years. Several workers suffering from leukemia were recognized as having an occupational disease in reference to table number 6 of the social security code; in their case, an inexcusable fault on the part of the employer was recognized. Conversely, the numerous cancers not registered in the table number 6, are not recognized by the CRRMP. Since 2013, the Irradiés de l'île Longue collective, the Brest branch of the Henri Pézerat association, has been fighting for the recognition of radiation-induced diseases outside the table. At the end of a long legal battle, this collective managed to have eight non-listed cancers recognized as occupational diseases: cancer of the esophagus and pharynx, cancer of the pancreas, cancer of the bladder and prostate, blood cancer (Waldenstrom's disease), myelodysplasia, brain cancer, lymphoma. Inexcusable fault has also been recognized for these cancers. The conclusions, presented at the end of 2025, of a study carried out by Bruno Chareyron, nuclear physicist and member of CRIIRAD, provide an even more precise picture of the working conditions at the pyrotechnics on Long Island over the period 1972-1996. Its main conclusions are as follows: the workers were exposed to very penetrating radiation (gamma and neutron radiation); near certain nuclear charges, radiation levels were more than a thousand times higher than the usual level of natural radiation in France; the absence of information on the risks has aggravated the exposure of workers; the estimates of doses suffered by workers were carried out a posteriori (generalized dosimetric monitoring dating only from 1996 on the basis of Île Longue) and suffer from numerous uncertainties; for certain workers, the cumulative dose over their entire career reaches, or even exceeds, 100 millisieverts: this corresponds to a particularly high risk of cancer and other pathologies. The MP encourages the Minister to encourage the establishment of a working group, bringing together military and CEA experts, representatives of exposed personnel and independent scientists in order to reconstruct with the greatest possible precision the professional exposure of operators in the pyrotechnics service, particularly over the period 1972-1996. It also relays another request: ensuring equality before the law between victims of weapons maintenance and assembly. nuclear weapons of the pyrotechnics of Long Island and the victims of nuclear tests. He wants to know her intentions on this matter.

Machine translation from French. The official text remains authoritative.

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