ASN Report 2017

06 ASN report on the state of nuclear safety and radiation protection in France in 2017 Over the past three years, ASN and IRSNwere granted additional resources. ASN is fully conscious of the efforts made in this respect by the Government and by Parliament. However, it reaffirms the need for reforms in the financing of the regulation and oversight of nuclear safety and radiation protection, which would enable it in the future to have access to resources that could be easily adapted to its needs. *** Falsification, changes required in monitoring and oversight practices The review of the quality of production by the Creusot Forge plant highlighted a number of irregularities: concealment of technical anomalies from the customer and the regulatory authority and potential falsification of measurement or examination results. These irregularities were detected neither by the Creusot Forge plant’s internal checks, nor by the monitoring carried out by Areva and EDF. Nor were the inspections carried out by ASN able to identify them. ASN has examined ways of improving the oversight and monitoring arrangements in order to improve the prevention and detection of this type of irregularity. The resulting action plan will be finalised in the first half of 2018. Increased safety requirements for continued operation of the facilities In 2020, ASN plans to issue a generic opinion on the continued operation of the 900 MWe reactors beyond their fourth periodic safety review. The public will participate in the drafting of this generic opinion. The safety reviews of the thirty-four 900 MWe reactors will run from  2020 to 2030; the first safety review report will be that of Tricastin 1 in 2020. The safety review will be carried out on the basis of the safety requirements applicable to the most recent reactors, more specifically with regards to internal and external hazards and severe accidents. Equipment compliance with the initial baseline safety requirements will also need to be verified, with particular attention paid to ageing phenomena. Installations other than power reactors cover a wide variety of activities (research, fuel cycle, waste management, production of radiopharmaceuticals and industrial irradiators, etc.) These installations are also often ageing. Several tens of these installations underwent a periodic safety review in 2017, many of them for the first time. Given the complexity of the subjects to be dealt with, this periodic safety review approach will take several years, both for the licensees and for ASN. EPR, advances in safety but a difficult construction phase The Flamanville EPR reactor is a “Generation III” pressurised water reactor, offering a significantly higher level of safety than the reactors currently in service. The EPR in particular offers greater protection against external hazards and more effective means of mitigating the consequences of accidents with coremelt. ASN underlines the fact that EDF still needs to carry out significant work before loading fuel into the reactor, to demonstrate on the one hand the serviceability of the nuclear pressure equipment, the primary and secondary systems in particular and, on the other, the performance of the safety systems. In 2018, ASN will be particularly vigilant with respect to the performance of the pre-startup tests, a key factor in guaranteeing the facility’s compliance with its baseline safety requirements. Radioactive waste management, a major safety challenge The public debate which should be held at the end of 2018 on the National Radioactive Material andWaste Management Plan (PNGMDR) will be an opportunity to obtain the opinion of the public on the most important issues: the reusable nature of materials, storage capacity, in particular for spent fuels and the highest level wastes, the management of very low level waste with a view to forthcoming decommissioning work, as well as the disposal of low level, long-lived waste and the disposal of high and intermediate level, long-lived waste. The periodic studies conducted to assess the consistency of the fuel cycle, taking account of possible changes in energy policy, are input into the PNGMDR. In 2018, ASN will issue an opinion on the consistency of the fuel cycle in the light of the consequences for nuclear safety and radiation protection, as well as on the storage facilities, which offer little capacity margin. ASN aims to ensure that the national system for radioactive materials and waste management remains pertinent on a long-term basis. In this respect, France welcomed an Artemis mission in early 2018. This is an international review by experts coordinated by the International Atomic Energy Agency. The auditors pointed out that the French system, which deals with all the issues, has a number of strong points, more particularly in terms of skills and the continuous progress approach. Improvement suggestions were made and will be taken into account in the next PNGMDR. Progress necessary in radiotherapy and interventional radiology ASN observes that there are still inadequacies in certain radiotherapy units, more particularly in the management of technological or organisational changes. Vigilance is thus still required, all the more so as four incidents rated level 2 on the ASN-SFRO scale were notified in 2017. There is a significant rise in interventions using X-ray imaging, thus constituting a growing concern for ASN. Inspections in this field show the persistence of radiation protection difficulties, both for the patients and for the health care personnel, as borne out by the notification of three significant events rated level 2 on the INES scale. These difficulties are primarily the result of a lack of radiation protection culture and often inadequate levels of medical physics staffing, owing to the budget difficulties experienced by the facilities. Editorial by the Commission