ASN Report 2017

167 ASN report on the state of nuclear safety and radiation protection in France in 2017 Chapter 05  - Radiological emergency and post-accident situations At the European level, ASN is a participant in the “Emergencies” working group reporting to HERCA. It also acts as secretary. This group is tasked with proposing harmonised European actions to protect the general public, on the one hand in the event of an accident in Europe and, on the other, in the event of a more remote accident, in the light of the lessons learned from the Fukushima Daiichi accident. This group partly consists of members appointed by WENRA. 2.2.3 International assistance The Interministerial Directive of 30th November 2005 defines the procedures for international assistance when France is called on or when it requires assistance itself in the event of a radiological emergency situation. For each Ministry, it contains an obligation to keep an up-to-date inventory of its intervention capability in terms of experts, equipment, materials and medical resources, which must be forwarded to ASN. As coordinator of the national assistance resources (RANET database), ASN takes part in IAEA’s work on the operational implementation of international assistance. France has been called upon several times since 2008 to assist a foreign country in a radiological emergency situation. For example, ASN has been contacted regularly in recent years for assistance requests concerning persons accidentally exposed to high-level radioactive sources. 3. Learning from experience 3.1 Carrying out exercises The main aim of these nuclear and radiological emergency exercises is to test the planned response in the event of a radiological emergency in order: ཛྷ ཛྷ to measure the level of preparedness of all the entities involved (safety Authorities, technical experts, licensees); ཛྷ ཛྷ to ensure that the plans are kept up to date, that they are well-known to those in charge and to the participants at all levels and that the alert and coordination procedures they contain are effective; ཛྷ ཛྷ to train those who would be involved in such a situation; ཛྷ ཛྷ to implement the various aspects of the organisation and the procedures set out in the Interministerial Directives: the emergency plans, the contingency plans, the local safeguard plans and the various conventions; ཛྷ ཛྷ to contribute to informing the media and develop a general public information approach so that everyone can, through their own individual behaviour, make a more effective contribution to civil protection; ཛྷ ཛྷ to build on emergency situation management knowledge and experience. These exercises, which are the subject of an annual Interministerial review, involve the licensee, the Ministries, the offices of the Prefect and services of the départements , ASN, ASND, IRSN and Météo-France , which can represent up to 300 people when resources are deployed in the field. They aim to test the effectiveness of the provisions made for assessing the situation, the ability to bring the installation or the package to a safe condition, to take appropriate measures to protect the general public and to ensure satisfactory communication with the media and the populations concerned. 3.1.1 National nuclear and radiological emergency exercises In the same way as in previous years, and together with the SGDSN, the DGSCGC and the ASND, ASN prepared a programme of national nuclear and radiological emergency exercises for 2017, concerning BNIs and RMT operations. This programme, announced to the Prefects in the Interministerial Circular of 2nd January 2017, took account of the lessons learned from Fukushima Daiichi and the emergency exercises performed in 2016. Generally speaking, these exercises enable the highest-level decision-making circles to be tested, along with the ability of the leading players to communicate, sometimes with simulated media pressure on them. Table 2 describes the key characteristics of the national exercises conducted in 2017. In addition to the national exercises, the Prefects are asked to conduct local exercises with the sites in their département , in order to improve preparedness for radiological emergency situations and more specifically to test the time needed to mobilise all the parties concerned. The performance of a national nuclear and radiological emergency exercise, at maximum intervals of five years on the nuclear sites covered by a PPI, and at least one annual exercise concerning RMT, would seem to be a fair compromise between the training of individuals and the time needed to effect changes to organisations. In 2017, in addition to the general objectives of the exercises listed earlier, additional objectives were introduced into the schedule, taking account of lessons learned and the results of the exercises and experimental training carried out in 2016. Certain exercises were thus extended by one day devoted to a phase dedicated to civil protection subjects, with a view to optimising the preparedness of the offices of the Prefects for implementation of population protection measures or post- accident actions specific to the nuclear sector. ASN is also heavily involved in the preparation and performance of emergency exercises that have a nuclear safety component and are organised by other players such as: ཛྷ ཛྷ its counterparts for nuclear security (HFDS - Defence and Security High Official reporting to the Minister in charge of Energy) or for defence-related facilities (ASND); ཛྷ ཛྷ international bodies (IAEA, European Commission, NEA); ཛྷ ཛྷ the Ministries (Health, Interior, etc.). With regard to defence-related facilities, two exercises run by the ASND were organised during the course of 2017, in accordance with the Interministerial Circular on nuclear and radiological emergency exercises.  ASN activated its emergency centre to support the ASND in accordance with the agreement signed by both authorities on 5th July 2017.