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French Operators Submit Reports On Latest Nuclear Safety Checks

By David Dalton
1 October 2012

1 Oct (NucNet): Nuclear operators in France have all met the deadline for carrying out checks and submitting post-Fukushima safety reports on 22 “lower priority” nuclear facilities, the country’s nuclear safety authority ASN (Autorité de Sûreté Nucléaire) has said.

ASN said in a statement that facilities covered by the latest safety checks, known as “évaluations complémentaires de sûreté” (ECS – supplementary safety assessments), included 12 permanently shut-down nuclear reactor units operated by EDF.

Other operators who carried out checks and submitted reports are France’s Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique et aux Energies Alternatives (CEA), which operates a number of civilian nuclear research centres; Areva, whose operations include uranium enrichment, fuel fabrication and back-end services; the operator of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) in Cadarache, southern France, and radioisotope producer Cis Bio.

ASN said the safety reports had been requested following the March 2011 accident at Fukushima-Daiichi and were designed to evaluate the safety margins for nuclear facilities for the risk of earthquake, flood, loss of power or cooling, or a combination of these events. Safety checks also examined arrangements for crisis management following a serious accident.

The reports will be analysed by ASN with the help of technical support from the Institute of Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN).

ASN said that between January and September 2012 it had also carried out a campaign of 17 “targeted inspections” of these facilities on topics related to the Fukushima-Daiichi accident. These inspections were in addition to 38 similar targeted inspections carried out in 2011.

In 2011 and 2012, ASN carried out 36 inspections targeted at nuclear laboratories, plants, facilities being decommissioned, and treatment facilities for the storage of radioactive waste. ASN also carried out inspections at six shut-down reactors and at 19 commercially operational reactors.

The French prime minister asked ASN to carry out security audits of all 150 French nuclear installations following the Fukushima-Daiichi accident.

For the 79 facilities deemed a priority – including the country’s 58 commercially operational nuclear plants, the Flamanville-3 European Pressurised Water Reactor (EPR) under construction in Normandy and Areva’s fuel cycle facilities – operators were asked to submit safety reports to ASN by 15 September 2011.

For other installations, operators were asked to submit their reports before 15 September 2012.

The French assessments have been running alongside stress tests being carried out at nuclear power plants across the EU in cooperation with the European Commission.

Details of the ECS checks are online:

www.asn.fr/index.php/Les-actions-de-l-ASN/Le-controle/Evaluations-complementaires-de-surete

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