ASN Report 2017

132 ASN report on the state of nuclear safety and radiation protection in France in 2017 Chapter 04  - Regulation of nuclear activities and exposure to ionising radiation 2.4 ASN approval of organisations and laboratories Article L. 592-21 of the Environment Code states that ASNmust issue the necessary approvals to the organisations taking part in the inspections and in ensuring the nuclear safety and radiation protection watch. Depending on the health or safety implications of a nuclear activity or a facility category, ASN may rely on the results of checks carried out by independent organisations and laboratories it has approved and which it monitors. ASN thus approves organisations so that they can perform the technical inspections required by the regulations in the fields within its scope of competence: ཛྷ ཛྷ radiation protection checks; ཛྷ ཛྷ measurement of radon activity concentration in premises open to the public; ཛྷ ཛྷ assessment of NPE conformity and inspection of pressure equipment in service. In order to approve the applicant organisations, ASN ensures that they perform the inspections in accordance with their technical, organisational and ethical obligations and in compliance with the rules of professional good practice. Compliance with these provisions should enable the required level of quality to be obtained and maintained. ASN ensures that benefit is gained from the approval, in particular through regular exchanges with the organisations it has approved and the mandatory submission of an annual report, in order to: ཛྷ ཛྷ turn operating experience feedback to good account; ཛྷ ཛྷ improve the approval process; ཛྷ ཛྷ improve the conditions of intervention by the organisations. The checks carried out by these organisations contribute to ASN’s overview of all nuclear activities. In 2016, the Organisations Approved for Radiation Protection inspections (OARP) carried out 74,514 inspections, for which the breakdown per type of source and per field is given in Table 2 that follows. The external inspection reports performed in each facility by the OARP are at the disposal of and examined by ASN personnel on the occasion of: ཛྷ ཛྷ licence renewals or modifications requiring ASN authorisation; ཛྷ ཛྷ inspections. Examination of these reports on the one hand makes it possible to check that the external inspections have actually been carried out and, on the other, enables the licensees to be questioned about the steps taken to remedy any nonconformities. ASN also approves laboratories to conduct analyses requiring a high level of measurement quality if the results are to be usable. It thus approves laboratories for the monitoring of: ཛྷ ཛྷ environmental radioactivity (see point 4); ཛྷ ཛྷ worker dosimetry (see chapter 1). The list of approvals issued by ASN is kept up to date on www.asn.fr ( “Bulletin officiel de l’ASN/agréments d’organismes” section). As at 31st December 2017, the following are approved by ASN: ཛྷ ཛྷ 41 organisations tasked with radiation protection checks; 11 approvals or approval renewals were delivered in 2017; ཛྷ ཛྷ 58 organisations tasked with measuring radon activity concentration in buildings. Nine of these organisations can also carry out measurements in cavities and underground structures, while 6 are approved to identify sources andmeans of radon ingress into buildings. In 2017, ASN issued 41 new approvals or approval renewals; FOCUS Prevention and detection of fraud Since the end of 2015, a number of irregularities, one might even say falsifications, have been brought to light in France and other countries at known, monitored manufacturers and suppliers who have been working for the nuclear sector for many years. These anomalies call into question the entire control chain, at the top of which are the manufacturers, suppliers and licensees. ASN is examining ways of modifying the oversight and monitoring of the various stakeholders, in order to improve the prevention and detection of this type of irregularity. The main aspects identified concern: ཛྷ ཛྷ information of the stakeholders, including implementation of a system for collecting alerts from whistle-blowers; ཛྷ ཛྷ changes to monitoring and inspection practices; ཛྷ ཛྷ the use of third-party organisations to take part in the inspection activities; ཛྷ ཛྷ the close involvement of the first links in the control chain. The resulting action plan will be finalised in the first half of 2018.