ASN Report 2017

188 ASN report on the state of nuclear safety and radiation protection in France in 2017 Chapter 07  - International relations framework designed to implement national radioactive waste and spent fuel management programmes. The Directive also contains provisions concerning transparency and participation of the public, the financial resources for management of spent fuel and radioactive waste, training, self-assessment obligations and regular peer reviews. These aspects constitute significant progress in reinforcing the safety and accountability of spent fuel and radioactive waste management in the European Union. The TECV Act and the Nuclear Ordinance enabled the provisions of the Directive to be transposed. 2.5 The Euratom European Directive on Radiation Protection “Basic Standards“ Directive 2013/59/Euratom of 5th December 2013 updates the basic standards for health protection against the hazards arising from the exposure of individuals to ionising radiation. The Member States were required to transpose the provisions of this Directive before 6th February 2018. Starting in 2013, ASN was leader and technical secretary for the transposition committee for this Directive. ASN also made sure that it played an active part in the work of the HERCA association to facilitate transposition. ASN more specifically focused on the subjects of the medical applications of ionising radiation, preparedness for emergency situations, the training of “radiation protection experts” and “radiation protection officers”. 2.6 The EURATOM Treaty European working groups ASN also participates in the work of the EURATOM Treaty committees and working groups: ཛྷ ཛྷ Article 31 experts group (Basic Radiation Protection Standards); ཛྷ ཛྷ Article 35 experts group (checking andmonitoring radioactivity in the environment); ཛྷ ཛྷ Article 36 experts group (information concerning regulation of radioactivity in the environment); ཛྷ ཛྷ Article 37 experts group (notifications concerning radioactive effluent discharges). 2.7 The Western European Nuclear Regulators Association (WENRA) WENRA continues to develop a joint approach to nuclear safety and its regulation, more notably within the European Union. WENRA created two working groups with the role of harmonising safety approaches in the fields of: ཛྷ ཛྷ nuclear power reactors (Reactor Harmonisation Working Group - RHWG); ཛྷ ཛྷ radioactive waste, spent fuel disposal and decommissioning (Working Group Radioactive Waste and Decommissioning - WGWD). In each of these fields, the groups defined the reference levels for each technical topic, based on the IAEA’s most recent standards and on the most stringent approaches adopted within the European Union. In 2017, WENRA held two plenary meetings, in April in Berne and in October at The Hague. These meetings produced the following major contributions: ཛྷ ཛྷ validation of an analysis document (ad hoc group on Article 8 of the 2014 Directive) concerning safety improvements to existing nuclear facilities, in response to the general objectives set by the 2014 Directive; ཛྷ ཛྷ finalisation of the technical specification allowing the start of the Topical Peer Review (TPR) in accordance with the 2014 Directive; ཛྷ ཛྷ continued technical examination of types of possible improvements, related to the first orientations of the ad hoc group; ཛྷ ཛྷ continued work on the reference levels concerning waste management; ཛྷ ཛྷ ASN oversight of a working group for technical anomalies (macrosegregation) on nuclear pressure equipment for Pressurised Water Reactors (PWR). This group enabled the French technical analysis to be shared and a draft recommendation to be prepared; ཛྷ ཛྷ initial examination of the need to develop reference levels for research reactors, more particularly by reviewing the levels developed for PWRs. 2.8 The Association of the Heads of the European Radiological Protection Competent Authorities (HERCA) HERCA, the Association of the Heads of the European Radiological Protection Competent Authorities, was created in 2007 at the initiative of ASN in order to organise close consultation between the heads of the European Authorities with competence for radiation protection. In now comprises 56 Authorities, 32 of which come from European countries. Five expert groups are currently working on the following topics: ཛྷ ཛྷ practices and sources in the industrial and research fields; ཛྷ ཛྷ medical applications of ionising radiation; ཛྷ ཛྷ preparation and management of emergency situations; ཛྷ ཛྷ veterinary applications; ཛྷ ཛྷ sources of naturally occurring radiation; ཛྷ ཛྷ education and training. ASN has been the technical secretary for this association since it was created and takes part in all the working groups. Moreover, in 2018 and  2019, ASN will chair the working group on medical applications. As early as 2014, HERCA approved an action plan to facilitate the transposition of Directive 2013/59/Euratom of 5th December 2013 (see point 2.5). In 2017, HERCA closed its action plan with the publication of six important documents concerning the transposition work and the implementation of the requirements of the Euratom Directive on radiation protection basic standards in the following fields: ཛྷ ཛྷ training of “radiation protection experts” and “radiation protection officers”; ཛྷ ཛྷ justification of new types or categories of practices in the medical field; ཛྷ ཛྷ involvement of scanner manufacturers in the optimisation of imaging procedures;