ASN Report 2017

190 ASN report on the state of nuclear safety and radiation protection in France in 2017 Chapter 07  - International relations 3. Multilateral International Relations 3.1 The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is a United Nations organisation based in Vienna. It comprises 168 Member States (November  2017 data). The IAEA’s activities are focused on two main areas: one of them concerns the control of nuclear materials and non-proliferation and the other concerns all activities related to the peaceful uses of nuclear energy. In this latter field, two IAEA departments are tasked on the one hand with developing and promoting applications of radioactivity, nuclear energy in particular, and on the other with the safety and security of nuclear facilities and activities. Following on from the action plan approved by the IAEA Board of Governors in September  2011 and with the aim of reinforcing safety worldwide by learning the lessons from the Fukushima Daiichi accident, the IAEA is focusing its work on the following fields: ཛྷ ཛྷ Revision and consolidation of the Safety Standards , describing the safety principles and practices that the vast majority of Member States use as the basis for their national regulations. This activity is supervised by the CSS, set up in 1996. The CSS consists of 24 representatives from the highest levels of safety regulator organisations, appointed for four years and has been chaired since early 2012 by the Director General of the Czech regulatory body, Dana Drabova. In 2017, the CSS held its 41st and 42nd meetings. An ASN deputy Director General is the French representative sitting on this commission, which coordinates the work of five committees. These committees are tasked with drawing up documents in their respective fields: NUSSC (Nuclear Safety Standards Committee) for installations safety, RASSC (Radiation Safety Standards Committee) for radiation protection, TRANSSC (Transport Safety Standards Committee) for the safe transport of radioactive materials, WASSC (Waste Safety Standards Committee) for safe radioactive waste management and EPReSC (Emergency Preparedness and Response Safety Standards Committee) for preparation and coordination in the event of a radiological emergency. France, represented by ASN, is present on each of these committees, which meet twice a year. It should be noted that the ASN representative on the NUSSC was appointed chairman of this committee in 2011 and that his three-year mandate was renewed in 2014. Representatives of the relevant French organisations also participate in the work of the technical groups drafting the documents. The mandates of the national representatives on these various committees came to an end at the end of 2017; they will be updated in 2018. A specific committee for security (Nuclear Security Guidance Committee - NSGC) was created and an interface designed to improve the analysis of the interaction between safety and security was set up between the committees working in these fields. For the longer term, an expansion of the scope of the CSS to security-related subjects overlapping with safety is being envisaged, in order to allow greater synergy between these fields. ཛྷ ཛྷ The rise in the number of peer reviewmissions requested from the IAEA by the Member States and their increased effectiveness. Of the observed missions, ASN hosted the ARTEMIS mission (Integrated Review Service for Radioactive Waste and Spent Fuel Management, Decommissioning and Remediation) at the beginning of 2018. The auditors assessed the French system for radioactive waste management in the light of the IAEA safety guides and technical recommendations, as well as the best practices in place internationally. Along the same lines, the IRRS and OSART missions are carried out using the IAEA safety standards as their point of reference. The IRRS missions ASN is in favour of holding these peer reviews on a regular basis, with widespread dissemination of their results. It is worth noting that through the provisions of the Directive 2009/71/Euratom on the safety of nuclear facilities, revised in 2014, the Member States of the European Union are already subject to periodic and mandatory peer reviews of their general nuclear safety and radiation protection oversight arrangements. The IRRS missions are devoted to analysing all aspects of the framework governing nuclear safety and the corresponding activities of a regulatory Authority. Further to the IRRS mission hosted in France in 2014, following which 46 recommendations and suggestions were made by the team of auditors, ASN developed an action plan to take appropriate measures and change certain practices. The IRRS follow-up mission took place from 1st to 9th October 2017 and was chaired by William Dean from the American Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). This mission reviewed the progress made since the 2014 mission, more particularly in the fields which had been the subject of recommendations and suggestions. The team of auditors concluded that France had significantly reinforced the framework of its regulation and oversight of nuclear safety and radiation protection, but it did however point out that ASN needed to demonstrate vigilance with regard to the question of human resources, in the light of the safety issues facing nuclear facilities in France. A total of 40 recommendations and suggestions were closed or are considered to be closed “subject to implementation of the ongoing measures” . During the closing session of this follow-up mission, the IAEA, represented by Greg Rzentkowski, head of the nuclear installations safety division, underlined ASN’s efficiency in its role as regulator and also recalled that France is so far the first country to have completed two full IRRS cycles, after the missions in  2009 and  2014 respectively. In 2017, ASN took part in several IRRS missions, in Nigeria, Romania, Botswana, Macedonia and Belgium, respectively. The OSART missions The OSART missions are carried out by a team of experts from third party country licensees who, for two to three weeks, examine the safety organisation of the nuclear power plants in