Level 2. In France: 2005: anomaly concerning certain safety pumps in EDF’s 900 MWe reactors which could, in certain accident situations, lead to loss of the cooling water recirculation function. 2004: generic anomaly affecting certain marshalling boxers in EDF nuclear power plants. This could have prevented various items (motors, valves) from operating in accident conditions involving the presence of water or steam in the reactor building. 2003: anomaly concerning the nuclear reactor cooling water recirculation system which could, in certain accident conditions, lead to clogging of the recirculation system sump filters for all the PWR reactors.
Level 3. In France: 2002: incident rated by the Swedish competent authority during transport by Federal Express (FedEx) between Sweden and the United States, via Roissy airport, of a package which at arrival registered a dose rate higher than the acceptable regulatory limit. 1981: fire in a storage silo at La Hague.
Abroad: 2005: detection of a radioactive leak from a pipe between the dissolver and a tank in the Thorp fuel reprocessing plant in Sellafield (United Kingdom). 2002: on the Davis Besse power plant reactor (United States) discovery of a cavity in the reactor vessel closure head caused by boric acid corrosion of the metal. 1997: fire and explosion in a low-level effluent bituminization facility in Tokai-Mura, Japan, with acute irradiation of three workers, two of whom subsequently died.
Level 4. In France: 1980: damage to the core of the Saint- Laurent A1 reactor.
Abroad: 1999: criticality accident in a fuel fabrication facility in Tokai-Mura, Japan, with acute irradiation of three workers, two of whom subsequently died. 1973: release of radioactive material following an exothermal reaction in a reprocessing tank in the Windscale plant (United Kingdom).
Level 5. In France: none.
Abroad: 1979: partial meltdown of the Three Mile Island reactor core in the United States.
Level 6. In France: none.
Abroad: 1957: explosion of a tank of radioactive products in the Kyshtym reprocessing plant in the USSR.
Level 7. In France: none.
Abroad: 1986: explosion of reactor 4 in the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine.

USE OF THE INES SCALE IN FRANCE

All nuclear safety-significant events are reported by the licensees to the ASN within 24 hours. This declaration comprises a proposed rating on the INES scale, to be approved by the ASN, which has sole responsibility for the final rating decision.
Using the INES scale enables the ASN to select those events and incidents which are sufficiently important for it to issue a communication:
• all incidents rated level 1 and above are systematically published on the ASN’s asn.gouv.fr website. Journalists are informed of incidents rated level 2 and above by press releases and telephone calls;
• incidents rated level 0 are not necessarily made public by the ASN. They may be published if of particular interest to the media.