The "Béryl incident" was a French nuclear test, conducted on 1 May 1962, during which nine soldiers of the 621st Groupe d'Armes Spéciales unit were heavily contaminated by radioactivity.

As many as 100 additional personnel were exposed to lower levels of radiation, estimated at 50 mSv, when the radioactive cloud produced by the blast passed over the command post, due to an unexpected change in wind direction.

The site was laid out from 1961 onward (on an airfield built northeast of In Amguel and base camp between the Tuareg village of In Amugel and the well in In Eker of which the border was controlled and occupied by gendarmes).

The lava solidified on the floor of the gallery, but the particulates and the gaseous products formed a cloud which culminated at about 2,600 metres (8,500 ft) of altitude, leading to radioactive fallout detectable for a few hundred kilometres downwind from the site.

The rush caused by the haste of the participants' decontamination gave rise to little worthy occurrences on the part of some officials after the testimony of Sodeteg (contractor) personnel.

Upon return to their base camp (H6), they became the object of clinical hematological (changes in blood cell populations) and radiological (spectrometry measurement from excreta) monitoring.

The nomadic populations of Kel Tohra, the most exposed (240 people moving about the northern fringe of the fallout) would thus have received a similar cumulative dose up to 2.5 mSv (on the order of magnitude of one year's natural radioactivity).

[9] The docudrama Vive la bombe!,[10] directed by Jean-Pierre Sinapi in 2006 and featuring Cyril Descours, Olivier Barthélémy, and Matthieu Boujenah, recounted this event through the experiences of military men irradiated.

Indirect references to this incident and the related Blue Jerboa test explosions appear in the Netflix fictional comedy produced by Arte called A Very Secret Service (Fr.

Documentary At(h)ome from 2013, directed by Élisabeth Leuvray, and Bruno Hadjih for photography and investigation, image by Armani A., Katell Djian, and Zyriab Meghraoui, sound by Mehdi Ahoudig, montage by Bénédicte Mallet, produced by Les Écrans du large.

[12] The novel L'affinité des traces by Gérald Tenenbaum discusses the accident through the eyes of a young secretary employed on the base, who then chooses to live with the Tuareg.