ASN Report 2017

93 ASN report on the state of nuclear safety and radiation protection in France in 2017 Chapter 03  - Regulations situation, whether on the site of the accident, within the perimeter of the facility, or outside in the areas in which special measures have been taken to protect the populations. The two intervening worker groups have been retained, but redefined as follows: ཛྷ ཛྷ the effective dose liable to be received by group 1 personnel is greater than 20 mSv; ཛྷ ཛྷ the effective dose liable to be received by group 2 personnel is greater than 1 mSv. Monitored and controlled area Some provisions of the Order of 15th May 2006 concerning the conditions for the demarcation and signage of monitored and controlled areas were introduced into the regulatory part of the Labour Code. A new order will nonetheless be needed to clarify its implementation. The system of monitored or controlled areas, identified by a “blue, green, yellow, orange or red” colour, giving a risk scale, is maintained, with the decree setting the effective doses to which the workers are liable to be exposed in each of these areas: ཛྷ ཛྷ the notions of regulated areas, specially regulated or intermittent or temporarily controlled areas have been abolished; ཛྷ ཛྷ “radon” zoning is put into place if the dose is liable to be greater than 6 mSv; ཛྷ ཛྷ “extremities” zoning is put into place if the monitored and controlled areas do not allow control of exposure of the extremities and guarantee compliance with the exposure limit values. Approval of dosimetry organisations ASN approval of dosimetry organisations is superseded by accreditation by the French accreditation committee. The accreditation baseline requirements will be reviewed to include particular requirements for example concerning the transmission of dosimetry results to the Ionising Radiation Exposure Monitoring Information System (SISERI). The approvals currently issued by ASN will continue to be valid for two years. FOCUS ASN opinion of 23rd February 2017 on the new provisions concerning radiation protection of the population In its opinion 2017-AV-0289 of 23rd February 2017 on the draft decree concerning health protection against the dangers arising from exposure to ionising radiation and the security of ionising radiation sources against malicious acts, ASN underlined the importance of the new measures more particularly applicable to implementation of the justification principle, the new authorisation, registration and notification system for small-scale nuclear activities and source security. ASN however wished to draw the Government’s attention to several points of particular importance for the public, points on which its opinion had not been taken into account: ཛྷ ཛྷ the update of the system banning the addition of radioactive substances to consumer goods, foodstuffs, livestock feedstuffs and construction materials, should have enabled the list of products for which no waiver is accepted to be extended to clothing accessories and cosmetics and toiletries; ཛྷ ཛྷ for management of radiological emergency situations, it would have been preferable to align the reference level with the existing intervention level when deciding on evacuation of the populations, that is an effective dose of 50 mSv/year, to make this easier to understand for the decision-makers and the public; ཛྷ ཛྷ the process to define remediation measures for sites and soils contaminated by substances, coordinated by the Prefect, should systematically involve ASN so that it can continue to exercise its duty of protection of the populations. 1.2.2 General protection of the population Apart from the special radiation protection measures included in individual nuclear activity licenses for the benefit of the general public and the workers, a number of general measures included in the Public Health Code help to protect the public against the dangers of ionising radiation. Justification Any nuclear activity must now be justified (the principle has been in the legislative part of the Public Health Code since 2001 but its application to all nuclear activities was not the subject of regulatory provisions). In this respect, an order shall give a classification of the existing activities, per category, considered in principle to be justified. The demonstration of justification is binding on any party responsible for a nuclear activity and is included in the licensing application file. This demonstration may refer to the above-mentioned order if the activity in question is mentioned in it. Optimisation For nuclear activities, the party responsible for the nuclear activity and the competent authority may set a “dose constraint” for implementation of the optimisation principle on the emitting source, to ensure protection of the population and the environment. This requirement supplements the obligation of meeting the annual limit of 1 mSv/year (which takes account of the possible combined impacts of several nuclear activities). Reference levels The concept of the reference level was introduced by the Ordinance of 10th February 2016. When used in radiological emergency and post-accident situations, exposure situations following radiological contamination of the environment, or natural radiation exposure situations (radon for example), these reference levels constitute a “benchmark” in the