The French government says it will pay out at least 10 million euros ($13.6 million), initially for one year, to people with health problems as a result of French nuclear tests carried out in the Algerian Sahara and in Polynesia, Defense Minister Herve Morin was quoted as saying on Tuesday, March 24.

"About 150,000 civilian and military employees are theoretically concerned, as well as the people who lived in the Sahara and Polynesia at the time of the tests," Morin said in an interview published in the daily Le Figaro.

Between 1960 and 1996, France carried out a total of 210 nuclear tests in the Algerian Sahara, French Polynesia and the Pacific Ocean.