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. France is one of the five "Nuclear Weapons States" (NWS) under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty , which France ratified in 1992 . France never ratified the Partial Test Ban Treaty , leaving it open to conduct nuclear tests at will. France had been one of the pioneers of nuclear physics but in 1945 it had to start again almost from scratch. The first French reactor went critical in 1948 and first plutonium was extracted in 1949 but there was no formal commitment to a nuclear weapons programme although plans were made for large scale production of plutonium. {Link without Title} In May 1954 the French were losing the war in Indochina against Ho Chi Minh. At the height of the decisive battle at Dien Bien Phu France's nuclear bosses sent a request to the chairman of the British Atomic Energy Authority. It was a shopping list of items that would help them build nuclear weapons, including a sample quantity of plutonium "so we can take the steps preparatory to the utilisation of our own plutonium". Britain had exploded its own bomb less than two years earlier and so they realised the significance of the request. Before the letter even arrived the French had lost the battle and the war but later that year the French prime minister, Pierre Mendes France, made the formal decision to build the atomic bomb. Britain agreed to supply the requested nuclear materials, including enriched uranium. Among the most important parts of the agreement was an arrangement for the British to check the blueprints and construction of French plutonium production reactors. According to one source, this not only helped the French get their military plutonium reactor at Marcoule into operation quickly but it also averted a disaster, for the British found defects which could have caused a catastrophic explosion at the Rhone Valley site. The same source says that when Charles de Gaulle came to power in 1958 he personally thanked Harold Macmillan for the team's work. There remained France's request for plutonium. In 1955 Britain agreed to export ten grams but "we would not tell the US that we were going to give the French plutonium nor about any similar cases". {Link without Title} In 1960 after many twists and turns France’s first atom bomb was detonated in Algeria which was still a French colony at the time.
France denies currently having Chemical Weapon s, ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) in 1995 , and acceded to the Biological And Toxin Weapons Convention (BWC) in 1984 . France had also ratified the Geneva Protocol in 1926 . SEE ALSO Internal link
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