ASN Report 2020

in the implementation of these routes. If no choices or decisions are made in the 5 year period covered by the next PNGMDR, no management route will be operational in the coming 20 years and our country will be unable to meet the capacity needs for disposal of the waste generated by the decommissioning of facilities and by completion of the legacy waste retrieval and conditioning operations. With regard to materials, ASN’s opinion set out the principles which should underpin this anticipation culture. Thus, reuse of a material could be considered to be plausible if the existence of an industry for use of this material is realistic within a time-frame of about thirty years, and if this reuse concerns volumes consistent with the stocks of material held now and foreseeable in the future. For the more distant future, long-term storage in safe conditions must be anticipated, along with the possible management of the radioactive substance as waste. In any case, if there are no prospects for use within a time-frame of about a century, the substance shall be reclassified as waste. Decommissioning and management of legacy waste: large-scale projects falling behind schedule Decommissioning operations are large-scale projects, from the technical and organisational viewpoints, which take place over lengthy periods of time, on installations which are constantly changing. The nuclear safety and radiation protection issues must therefore be periodically reassessed. The observations made for a number of years now show that postponing the decommissioning of old facilities makes the operations considerably more complex and leads to major delays with regard to the planned schedules. In 2020, ASN issued binding requirements concerning the next steps in the specif ic operations involved in the decommissioning of the six f irst-generation gas‑cooled reactors, and asked that decommission­ ing f iles incorporating the new decommissioning scenario be submitted by 2022. It also found clear delays in implementation of the waste management and decommissioning strategy for the legacy facilities of the Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), for which ASN and the Defence Nuclear Safety Authority (ASND) issued a ruling in 2019. It observed improvements at Orano, albeit too slow, in the legacy radioactive waste retrieval and conditioning operations. Overall, ASN continued with its examination of the steps taken by the licensees to manage their complex projects, which it considers to be essential if decom­ missioning is to be able to progress satisfactorily. Organisational and technical failings still the cause of avoidable events in the medical sector Even in the context of the health crisis, radiation protection in the medical f ield remained at a satisfactory level. There were very few level 2 or 3 signif icant Radiation Protection Events (ESR) but they were nonetheless avoidable (laterality error, dose f ractionation error). The occurrence of these ESR reveals organisational and technical failings, recalling the importance of a radiation protection culture. The control of high-tech devices remains delicate, on the one hand for their handling and on the other during the implementation of new procedures. Adequate training time is essential for their appropriation by the teams and thus avoid incorrect setting of software parameters and standardisation of procedures would also help reduce the risk of transmitting incorrect data. Preparing for and supporting technological innovation in the medical field To prepare for the expansion of the therapeutic indicat­ ions of radiopharmaceutical drugs marked with lutetium-177 and the increase in the number of patients who will benefit accordingly in France, ASN asked the Advisory Committee for Radiation Protection of Health Professionals, the Public and Patients for Medical and Forensic Applications of Ionising Radiation (GPMED) to update the conditions for the possession and administration of these drugs by the nuclear medicine units. … 6 ASN Report on the state of nuclear safety and radiation protection in France in 2020 EDITORIAL BY THE COMMISSION