ASN Report 2017

423 ASN report on the state of nuclear safety and radiation protection in France in 2017 Chapter 15  - Decommissioning of Basic Nuclear Installations or contaminated materials from Pressurised Water Reactors (PWR). The analysis and expert assessment activities were entirely transferred in 2015 to a new facility on the site, the Lidec (Ceidre integrated laboratory). With decommissioning of the installation in view, the activities at AMI essentially concern decommissioning preparation operations and surveillance. The decommissioning file was submitted in June 2013. At the end of 2014, ASN asked EDF for further information concerning the planned state of the facility in 2018 (projected time frame for publishing the decommissioning decree). This additional information was provided by the licensee in 2016 and deemed satisfactory; consequently, the decommissioning file underwent a public inquiry in early 2017 and ASN is continuing to examine it. ASN considers that waste treatment management and in-service equipment monitoring are satisfactory. Particular attention must however be focused on operating rigour. In a context where the facility’s activities are undergoing significant changes, ASN will be attentive to the management of these changes. Furthermore, the organisation of the facility changed substantially at the beginning of 2017, with internal transfer of operational operating responsibility to another of the licensee’s departments. ASN will be particularly attentive to the licensee’s compliance with the baseline requirements of the facility. Lastly, in 2018 ASN will examine the periodic safety review conclusions report for the AMI, which it received in November  2017. 2.2 CEA installations ASN and ASND (Defence Nuclear Safety Authority) have noted that the decommissioning operations and the retrieval and packaging of the CEA legacy waste are significantly behind schedule. The forecast duration of the decommissioning and legacy waste retrieval operations has been very significantly increased (about fifteen years for the Fontenay-aux-Roses installations and for the UP1 plant of the Marcoule DBNI (Defence Basic Nuclear Installation), and there is considerable lateness in the transmission of decommissioning files. Consequently, ASN and ASND asked the CEA to present in 2016 the new decommissioning strategy it envisaged for all the BNIs and individual installations situated inside DBNIs. ASN and ASND have asked the CEA to draw up decommissioning programmes for the next fifteen years based on ranked priorities of safety, radiation protection and environmental protection, taking particular account of the total potential activity of the radioactive and hazardous substances present in each installation. ASN and ASND have also asked the CEA to conduct an overall review of the CEA’s radioactive material and waste management strategy. ASN and ASND have also asked the CEA to increase the human resources assigned to decommissioning operations and to the organisation of its decommissioning and waste management programmes, and to review the financial resources assigned to the decommissioning operations. The file submitted at the end of 2016 was deemed admissible. ASN and ASND nevertheless asked for several additions to it. The ongoing examination should lead the authorities to adopt a position on this strategy in 2018. 2.2.1 The Fontenay-aux-Roses Centre Created in 1946, the Fontenay-aux-Roses site - CEA’s first research centre - is continuing to move away from nuclear activities and towards research into the life sciences. The CEA Fontenay-aux-Roses Centre comprises two BNIs, namely Procédé (BNI 165) and Support (BNI 166). BNI 165 accommodated the research and development activities on nuclear fuel reprocessing, transuranium elements, radioactive waste and the examination of irradiated fuels. These activities were stopped in the years 1980-1990. BNI 166 is a facility for the characterisation, treatment, reconditioning and storage of legacy radioactive waste and waste from the decommissioning of BNI 165. The Procédé installation (BNI 165) and Support installation (BNI 166) The decommissioning of these two installations was authorised by two Decrees of 30th June 2006. The initial planned duration of the decommissioning operations was about ten years. The CEA informed ASN that, due to strong presumptions of radioactive contamination beneath one of the buildings, to unforeseen difficulties and to a change in the overall decommissioning strategy of the CEA’s civil centres, the decommissioning operations would extend beyond 2030, and in June 2015 it filed an application to change the prescribed decommissioning time frames. ASN deemed that the first versions of these files were not admissible. In 2017, the CEA undertook to provide a new more complete version of these files in 2018. In the light of its inspections and the incidents reported in 2017, ASN considers that the standard of safety of the Fontenay-aux-Roses BNIs is improving. Nevertheless, control of the fire risk remains a major issue and there appears to be room for improvement in the emergency management organisation. ASN will closely monitor the CEA’s commitments in terms of manpower and training in these two areas. ASN also considers that the reorganisation of the centre has led to job vacancies. This has caused delays in the revising of the on-site emergency plan, which has still not been completed, and in the files currently being examined (decommissioning and post-operational clean-out files). ASN expects the licensee to be more responsive. Lastly, the high-level effluents from the Circé facility in BNI 166 have been duly removed. The periodic safety review of the two facilities has been completed and the CEA sent the files and conclusions reports to ASN at the end of 2017. ASN will examine these reports in 2018, along with the submitted decommissioning authorisation modification application files.