ASN Report 2017

52 ASN report on the state of nuclear safety and radiation protection in France in 2017 Chapter 01  - Nuclear activities: ionising radiation and health and environmental risks As regards protection of the population and the environment, the BNI licensee must also take all necessary steps to achieve and maintain an optimum level of protection. Discharges of liquid and gaseous effluents, whether radioactive or not, are in particular strictly limited (see chapter 4). 2.2.2 Transport of radioactive substances When transporting radioactive substances, the main risks are those of internal or external exposure, criticality, as well as risks of a chemical nature. Safe transport of radioactive substances relies on an approach called defence in depth: ཛྷ ཛྷ The robustness of the packaging is the first line of defence. The packaging plays a vital role and must withstand the foreseeable transport conditions. ཛྷ ཛྷ The reliability of the transport operations constitutes the second line of defence. ཛྷ ཛྷ Finally, the third line of defence consists of the means of response implemented in the event of an incident or accident. 2.2.3 Small-scale nuclear activities Ionising radiation, whether emitted by radionuclides or generated by electrical equipment, is used in many areas, including medicine (radiology, radiotherapy, nuclear medicine), biology, research, industry, but also in veterinary applications and the conservation of foodstuffs. The employer is required to take all necessarymeasures to protect workers against the hazards of ionising radiation. The facility licensee must also implement the provisions of the Public Health Code for the management of the ionising radiation sources in its possession (radioactive sources in particular) and, where applicable, manage the waste produced and limit discharges of liquid and gaseous effluents. In the case of use for medical purposes, patient protection issues are also taken into account (see chapter 3). 2.2.4 Radioactive waste management Like all industrial activities, nuclear activities can generate waste, some of which is radioactive. The three fundamental principles on which strict radioactive waste management is based are the accountability of the waste producer, the traceability of the waste and public information. The technical management provisions to be implemented must be tailored to the hazard presented by the radioactive waste. This hazard can be assessed primarily through two parameters: the activity level, which contributes to the toxicity of the waste, and the half-life, the time after which the activity level is halved. Finally, management of radioactive waste must be determined prior to any creation of new activities or modification of existing activities in order to: ཛྷ ཛྷ ensure the availability of processing channels for the various categories of waste likely to be produced, from the front-end phase (production of waste and packaging) to the back-end phase (storage, transport and disposal); ཛྷ ཛྷ optimise the waste disposal routes. 2.2.5 Management of contaminated sites Management of sites contaminated by residual radioactivity resulting either from a past nuclear activity or an activity which generated deposits of natural radionuclides warrants specific radiation protection actions, in particular if rehabilitation is envisaged. Depending on the current and future uses of the site, decontamination objectives must be set. The removal of the waste produced during post-operation clean-out of the contaminated premises and remediation of soil must be managed from the site through to storage or disposal. The management of contaminated objects also follows these same principles. Transport packaging.