The IAEA is an United Nations organisation , which comprises 137 Member States. With regard to the area of competence of the ASN, the activities of the IAEA primarily consist in:

- organising discussion groups at different levels and preparing texts known as "Safety Standards", describing safety principles and practices which can then be used by Member States as a basis for national regulations. Since the beginning of 1996, this activity has been supervised by the CSS (Commission on Safety Standards), comprising senior representatives of the regulatory authorities of twenty Member States, tasked with proposing standards to the Director General of the Agency. France is represented on this Commission by the Director General of the ASN, who has chaired the Commission since the beginning of 2005, and by one of his deputies. This commission co-ordinates the activities of four committees entrusted with supervising the drafting of documents in four areas: NUSSC (NUclear Safety Standards Committee) for reactor safety, RASSC (RAdiation Safety Standards Committee) for radiation protection, TRANSSC (TRANsport Safety Standards Committee) for the safe transport of radioactive materials and WASSC (WAste Safety Standards Committee) for safe radioactive waste management. France is represented on all these committees. It also takes part in the technical groups which draft these documents.
These "Safety Standards", approved by the CSS and published under the responsibility of the Director General of the IAEA, comprise three levels of documents: Safety Fundamentals, Safety Requirements and Safety Guides. At the end of 2005, 64 revised safety standards had been published, 4 others have been approved and another 37 standards are currently being drafted or revised;

- setting up "services" made available to Member States and designed to give them opinions on specific safety-related aspects. This category includes the following missions: OSART (Operational Safety Review Team), IRRT (Integrated Regulatory Review Team), PROSPER (Peer Review of the effectiveness of experience feedback system), TRANSAS (TRANsport Safety Appraisal Service), RASSIA (Radiation Safety and Security Infrastructure Appraisal).

In 2005, an OSART mission took place in May at the Le Blayais plant. A preparatory OSART mission went to the Saint-Laurent-des-Eaux nuclear power plant in December. The reports on all the OSART missions conducted in France are available in their original language, English, on the ASN's website, www.asn.gouv.fr.

In July, France asked for an IRRT mission which, in November 2006, will require the ASN to submit its nuclear safety and radiation protection reference system and regulatory practices to an external peer review.

- harmonisation of communication tools. The French proposal of a radiation protection events classification scale led to intense international debate aimed at improving the international nuclear events scale (INES).

In the past, the ASN played a central role in establishing the INES scale. It also played an active role in drafting the scale for classifying radioactive material transport incidents. France is one of the leading users of the INES scale when communicating about events occurring in its basic nuclear installations (BNI) and radioactive material transports.

Since 2002, the ASN has been looking to develop a communication tool for dealing with radiation protection incidents. The existing INES scale was felt to be insufficient for communications dealing with exposure to ionising radiation, as its radiation protection classification criterion did not refer to the radiological risk, which is the basis of the current regulations. France therefore rekindled the international debate with a view to adding a radiation protection criterion to the INES scale so as to link the radiation exposure dose received to the radiation protection incident or accident gravity index.

The French proposal led to trials in the Member States of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) of a new part of the INES scale concerning radiation protection incidents, which takes account of radioactive sources and shipments of radioactive materials. This new part, which includes the principle of the relationship between the radiological risk and the seriousness of the event, has been applicable in France since 1 January 2005 on an experimental basis. Initially, France limited application of this new scale to BNIs and to transport. Broader application to medical, industrial and research facilities will then be envisaged.