The history of France's military nuclear program recounts the path that led France to develop a military nuclear program after World War II. The establishment of the French Nuclear Deterrence Force was based on a French nuclear testing program that began on February 13, 1960, and ended on January 27, 1996.
In 2012, the Strategic Oceanic Force comprises four nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines equipped with strategic sea-to-surface ballistic missiles. The Strategic Air Force uses enhanced medium-range air-to-surface missiles with airborne warheads under Dassault Mirage 2000 aircraft at air base 125 Istres-Le Tubé. This missile is also used with Dassault Rafale aircraft at air base 113 Saint-Dizier-Robinson and on board the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle.
The scientific adventure of the atom (1895-1945)
The origins (1895-1903)
International scientific research into the atom began with the discovery of X-rays by German physicist Wilhelm Röntgen on November 8, 1895, in Würzburg, following the observation of a strange, pale glow coming from a luminescent screen placed, by chance, on a table at a distance from a Crookes tube. He soon realized that this was a new form of radiation, produced when electrons collide with atoms on the positive electrode (the cathode) when an electric current is passed through a cathode ray tube. In France, following Henri Poincaré's presentation of Röntgen's discovery of X-rays to the French Academy of Sciences in early 1896, Henri Becquerel decided to investigate the relationship between the luminescence of certain materials and the emission of these mysterious X-rays. Experimenting in 1896 to find the origin of this luminescence, he discovered by chance that uranium salts spontaneously emitted radiation, whether or not they had been exposed to light. At first, he dubbed them uranic rays.
From 1896 onwards, Pierre and Marie Curie set out to find an explanation for the phenomenon discovered by Wilhelm Röntgen and for these uranic rays. They processed hundreds of kilos of uranium ore by crushing it and dissolving it in acid. In 1898, Marie Curie discovered that thorium had the same radiation properties as uranium. The two physicists went on to isolate a first element, named polonium in homage to Marie's homeland, and then a second, even more active element: radium. These discoveries earned them the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903, along with Henri Becquerel.
In 1903, Ernest Rutherford came up with an explanation for the presence of these new elements and the links between them. He hypothesized that the radioactive elements found around uranium and thorium were linked together, with the heavier element losing its substance through decay to give rise to another element, and so on.
The internal structure of the atom (1903-1932) In 1910, Rutherford provided the first representation of the atom's internal structure: a positively charged nucleus around which negative charges gravitate. But it was Niels Bohr who explained in 1913 that electrons do not collapse on the nucleus due to attraction and remain at a given level, using Max Planck's quantum theory.
Irène, Marie Curie's daughter, and Frédéric Joliot-Curie observed that beryllium bombardment could give rise to the projection of protons, in addition to the emission of radioactivity. The Englishman James Chadwick provided a decisive explanation in 1932 when he discovered the existence of neutrons in the atom, uncharged particles alongside protons.
The discovery of nuclear energy (1932-1939)
It was the work of Irène and Frédéric Joliot Curie that really gave birth to nuclear physics. At the end of 1933, by bombarding aluminum foil with a polonium source, they demonstrated the production of radioactive phosphorus 30, an isotope of naturally occurring phosphorus 30. They deduced that it was possible to produce elements with the same properties as natural elements, but which were also radioactive. Right from the start, they saw all the possible applications, particularly in the medical field, with radioactive tracers. They were awarded the Nobel Prize for this discovery in 1935.
The chain reaction In 1934, Italy's Enrico Fermi observed that neutrons slowed down (by a journey through kerosene, for example) were much more efficient than ordinary neutrons. Future facilities would need to include "moderating" materials such as heavy water.
Numerous European research laboratories bombarded nuclei to analyze their effects. In December 1938, two Germans exiled in Sweden, Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch, came up with a key explanation of nuclear energy, the phenomenon of nuclear fission.
In February 1939, Niels Bohr demonstrated that, of the two isotopes contained in natural uranium: 238U and 235U, only uranium 235 is "fissile". What's more, it is much rarer than uranium 238, accounting for just 0.72% of the uranium extracted from a mine.
Finally, in April 1939, four Frenchmen - Frédéric Joliot-Curie, Hans Halban, Lew Kowarski and Francis Perrin - published an article in the journal Nature, shortly before their American rivals, which was to prove fundamental for future events, demonstrating that fission of the uranium nucleus is accompanied by the emission of 3.5 neutrons (the exact figure would be 2.4), which can in turn fragment other nuclei and so on, in a "chain reaction".
The three French patents
In early May 1939, the four Frenchmen filed three patents: the first two concerned the production of energy from uranium, and the third, a secret one, the improvement of explosive charges. All three were employed by the Collège de France as part of a team headed by Frédéric Joliot. Joliot, convinced of the future importance of civilian and military applications of atomic energy, met Raoul Dautry, Minister of Armaments, in the early autumn of 1939. He gave his full support, firstly for explosives development and secondly for energy production.
In July 1939, experiments on the release of energy by chain reaction began at the Collège de France laboratory and continued in Ivry-sur-Seine at the Laboratoire de Synthèse Atomique (founded under the Popular Front under the aegis of the Caisse Nationale pour la Recherche Scientifique, which had acquired the Ampère laboratories of the Compagnie Générale Électro-Céramique). To secure his patents, Joliot wove an industrial network around him, notably through an agreement between the CNRS and the Union Minière du Haut Katanga, owner of the uranium in the Belgian Congo.
In autumn 1939, the Joliot team realized that France would not have the means to enrich natural uranium to its fissile isotope (235U), and turned to the use of heavy water. In February 1940, at the request of the Collège de France, Raoul Dautry sent Jacques Allier on a secret mission to Norway to acquire the entire 200-litre stock of heavy water held by Norsk Hydro (a company with partly French capital), a stock that Germany also coveted.
Suspension of research in France (1940-1945)
Germany's invasion of France in May 1940 forced work to stop. In early June, the laboratory was hastily moved from Paris to Clermont-Ferrand, but the war was already lost. On June 18, 1940, as General de Gaulle launched his famous appeal on the London radio, Hans Halban and Lew Kowarski embarked at Bordeaux for the United Kingdom, taking the heavy water. The uranium was hidden in Morocco and France. Joliot did not leave, remaining in France to care for his ailing wife, returning to his post at the Collège de France but refusing to collaborate. He officially joined the Resistance in 1943.
The exiled members of the Collège de France delivered French secrets to the Allies, but were excluded from the American nuclear program for economic (the three patents) and political (distrust of de Gaulle and Joliot) reasons. Isolated at the Cavendish laboratory in Cambridge, then at the Montreal laboratory from the end of 1942, they contributed to the work carried out by an Anglo-Canadian team. This work was to be decisive for the resumption of French research in this field.
Under the direction of Louis Rapkine, a scientific office for the Free French Delegation was set up in New York shortly after the United States entered the war in December 1941. It was through this office that French scientists in exile, such as Pierre Auger, Jules Guéron and Bertrand Goldschmidt, were integrated - not into the American teams themselves, as they refused to take the nationality - but into the Anglo-Canadian project headed by Halban.
France gets left out of the picture On August 19, 1943, the United States and the United Kingdom signed the Quebec Agreement merging their respective nuclear programs (Manhattan and Tube Alloys) and stipulating non-disclosure of their work. They knew that France and the USSR would soon catch up, but did not want to make it easy for them. In this regard, Winston Churchill declared: "In all circumstances, our policy must be to keep the matter, as far as we can control it, in American and British hands, and to let the French and Russians do what they can". With this in mind, on March 23, 1944, the Americans and British signed an agreement with the Belgian government in exile in London, reserving Congolese uranium production for themselves, thus rendering null and void the private agreement of 1939 with the CNRS.
On July 11, 1944, in a back room of the Ottawa consulate, Guéron, Auger and Goldschmidt informed General De Gaulle of the American nuclear program and the prospects opened up by fission. This information confirmed what the General had already learned in London. As soon as Paris was liberated in August 1944, the first group of French scientists, including Auger, returned from Montreal against American advice. The British let this happen because they had to deal with De Gaulle, who might demand the sharing of atomic secrets or draw closer to the Russians. They chose to manipulate Joliot, favored by the General, who exaggerated the difficulties involved in making the bomb, while assuring him that they would cooperate. In April 1945, the towns to which the German atom scientists had retreated fell to the 1st French Army, but the men of Alsos Mission raided the laboratories, including the Haigerloch atomic reactor, captured the German scientists and left nothing behind but a few technicians.
Shunned by the Anglo-Americans, deprived of uranium sources and with meagre war prizes, the French nuclear program was going to have to operate independently, all the more so as the Minister of Armaments, Charles Tillon, was a member of the French Communist Party.
The beginnings of a military nuclear program (1945-1958)
France's position at the end of World War II (1945-1949)
As early as May 1945, Raoul Dautry (then Minister for Reconstruction and Town Planning in the Provisional Government) informed General de Gaulle (then President of the Provisional Government) that nuclear power would benefit both reconstruction and national defense. The progress made by American research in this field was revealed to the general public by the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945. On August 31, de Gaulle commissioned Raoul Dautry and Frédéric Joliot to propose an organization for the French nuclear industry capable of mobilizing energies to build the bomb.
On October 18, 1945, the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (Commissariat à l'énergie atomique - CEA) was created by Ordinance 45–2563. Reporting directly to the President of the French Council, its mission was to pursue scientific and technical research into the use of nuclear energy in various fields of industry, science and defense. The first two people to share responsibility for running the organization were Joliot, as High Commissioner for Scientific and Technical Affairs, and Dautry, as General Administrator.