France concealed the true impact of its nuclear tests in the Pacific from the 1960s to the 1990s, a study has said.
Researchers used declassified French military documents, calculations and testimonies to reconstruct the impact of a number of the tests.
They estimated that around 110,000 people in French Polynesia were affected by the radioactive fallout.
The number represented "almost the entire" population at the time, the researchers found.
French Polynesia, a French territory made up of hundreds of islands and atolls including Tahiti, was the site of dozens of nuclear tests over 30 years.
Over the course of two years, researchers analysed around 2,000 documents released by the French military and recreated the impact of "the most contaminating" of France's nuclear tests carried out between 1966 and 1974.
The study was carried out in collaboration between French news website Disclose, researchers from Princeton University and British firm Interprt.
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