In 1981, nearly ten years after Greenpeace's voyages to Moruroa into the French exclusion zone around Moruroa Atoll in 1972 and 1973 to protest against French nuclear testing, the Vega returns once again to Moruroa to protest at France's continued detonation (now underwater) of neutron bombs that have blown one side off the atoll and caused a huge crack in the side to open resulting in the release of radiation into the ocean.