ASN Report 2017

28 ASN report on the state of nuclear safety and radiation protection in France in 2017 ASN has 11 regional divisions through which it carries out its regulatory responsibilities throughout metropolitan France and in the French overseas départements and regional authorities. Consequently, several ASN regional divisions can be required to coordinate their work in a given administrative region. As at 31st December 2017, the ASN regional divisions comprised 225 staff members, including 159 inspectors. Under the authority of the regional representative (see chapter 2, point 2.3.2), the ASN regional divisions carry out field inspections on the BNIs, on radioactive substance transport and on small-scale nuclear activities; they examine the majority of the licensing applications submitted to ASN by the persons/entities in charge of nuclear activity within their 08 Regional overview of nuclear safety and radiation protection of this equipment; the periodic safety review and continued operation beyond 40 years of the power reactors, but also of fuel cycle facilities. Finally, at the beginning of 2018, France hosted an ARTEMIS mission (Integrated Review Service for Radioactive Waste and Spent Fuel Management, Decommissioning and Remediation), an international review by experts organised by the IAEA. This review offered foreign experts an opportunity to assess the French system for management of radioactive wastes and spent fuel, decommissioning and post-operational clean-out. The auditors more specifically underlined the many strong points of the French system, in particular the coverage of all the issues linked to the management of radioactive waste, as well as the skills available and the continuous progress approach adopted. The auditors also made suggestions and spotlighted best practices. Outlook ASN will continue its actions within a European framework, with regard to nuclear safety and radiation protection, more particularly through bilateral cooperation agreements, but also and above all through involvement in the work of ENSREG, notably the thematic review concerning management of the ageing of power reactors and research reactors with a power level of more than 1 MWth, a review which led to the drafting of a national report published in December 2017. ASN will also aim to ensure that its policies and positions carry weight within multilateral frameworks, in particular with respect to the IAEA. To this end, ASN: ཛྷ ཛྷ will continue bilateral exchanges with foreign safety regulators on regulatory practices and on priority subjects such as monitoring of the manufacture of nuclear pressure equipment; ཛྷ ཛྷ will actively take part in the work of HERCA, WENRA, IAEA, the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) and INRA (International Nuclear Regulators Association); ཛྷ ཛྷ will present the national report to the first thematic peer review of ageing management (ENSREG) to be held from 14th to 18th May 2018 in Luxembourg; ཛྷ ཛྷ will contribute to the performance of stress tests on the Ostrovets NPP in Belarus; ཛྷ ཛྷ will contribute to examining the definition of technical objectives to improve safety, as related to Article 8 of the 2014 Directive; ཛྷ ཛྷ will be a driving force behind the WENRA task force which is to define a strategy document; ཛྷ ཛྷ will examine the possibility of holding a transboundary “Large Region” conference on nuclear safety and radiation protection, in order to achieve more balanced cooperation; ཛྷ ཛྷ will present the national report within the framework of the Joint Convention (2018); ཛྷ ཛྷ will continue its involvement in the European cooperation instruments assisting third party countries in the field of nuclear safety. Significant events and outlook