Moruroa Atoll
Coral Health and Monitoring Program
coral at coral.AOML.ERL.GOV
Tue Jul 4 21:41:15 EDT 1995
Greetings,
The following message from Reinhold Leinfelder had some
transmission difficulties on his end and is herewith being
retransmitted. We apologize if this is a duplicate posting for you.
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| |
| Coral Health and Monitoring Program |
| Ocean Chemistry Division |
| Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorlogical Laboratories |
| National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration |
| Miami, Florida |
| USA |
| |
| Email: coral at coral.aoml.erl.gov |
| World-Wide Web: http://coral.aoml.erl.gov |
| |
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================================
Dear Colleagues,
The present situation at Moruroa Atoll should not only worry us but rather
demands some actions also from the Coral Health and Monitoring Group as
well as others working on reefs. As reef researchers we all know that reefs
are very porous systems which never will be dense and fence off nuclear
waste from the surrounding world. This is true even if the atoll will not
collapse due to the nuclear explosion.
Particularly when judging from the fossil record reefs are highly porous,
open hydrological systems. This is why reefs form the majority of reservoir
rocks for giant oil fields. The fact that the oil is entrapped in the reefs
is not contradictory to this view: The reef reservoirs are sealed by
younger rocks or special tectonic situations. This is not possible in
modern reefs which hence are one of the most open hydrological systems.
Many oceanic atolls probably exhibit 'endo-upwelling' which is thought to
be caused by stronger heatflow above the volcanic basement, so that
additional to the generally high lateral permeability a vertical
permeability and water flow from down to the surface might be generated.
THIS WAS PARTICULARLY SHOWN FOR MORUROA ATOLL by Rougerie, F. & Wauthy, B.
(1993): The endo-upwelling concept: from geothermal convection to reef
construction.- Coral Reefs, 12/1: 19-30, Heidelberg etc. (Springer
International). Knowing about these facts, we should open our mouths.
I am no member of Greenpeace (I am Professor of Geology and Paleontology at
the University of Stuttgart, Germany) but it seems that Greenpeace is the
most active group in this aspect and that they try to follow a scientific
line, besides all public relation work which is certainly necessary as
well. They particularly demand more thorough studies prior to any tests. If
you are interested you may see their WWW-page:
http://www.greenpeace.org/~comms/rw/rwletter.html . At this page which is
from the Greenpeace REsearch Labs, Greenpeace presents a RATIONALE FOR A
PROGRAMME OF STUDY TO ASSESS THE IMPACT OF FRENCH NUCLEAR TESTING AT
MORUROA AND FANGATAUFA.
Additional information is on http://www.greenpeace.org/~comms/rw/rw.html.
The e-mail address of Greenpeace research labs is:
<exeter.lab at green2.greenpeace.org> where you could send a support
statement.
Be it through Greenpeace, any other institution or directly to the French
government or embassy, please act in an appropriate manner as fast as you
can!
Best wishes Reinhold Leinfelder
********************************************
Reinhold Leinfelder
Institut fuer Geologie und Palaeontologie der Universitaet Stuttgart
Herdweg 51
D-70174 Stuttgart
Germany
e-mail: reinhold.leinfelder at po.uni-stuttgart.de
phone: ++49-711-1211340
fax: ++49-711-1211341
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