ASN Report 2018

M irroring the arrival, at the end of 2018, of two new members of the Commission, including the Chairman, more than 10% of the ASN personnel were renewed during this period. In addition, several consultative groups reporting to ASN, whose mandate expired in 2018, underwent changes in compositionwith the arrival of newmembers: the Scientific Committee and five of the Advisory Committees of Experts. A sixth Advisory Committee for Decommissioning activities was also set up, in the light of the growing importance of these issues. This major renewal in no way impeded the correct performance of ASN’s duties, nor the continuity of its oversight policy and its position statements. This is notably explained by the collective nature of ASN operations. In this way, the review of the potentially falsified dossiers from the Le Creusot plant (nearly two million pages) was completed on-time. In the field of small-scale nuclear facilities, the transposition of the radiation protection “Basic Safety Standards” Directives, a major regulatory undertaking, led to the publication of a decision setting out the list of activities requiring notification. All of the work done by ASN was carried out under the watchful eye of the regulatory authorities, peers, members of parliament and members of the general public. ASN was summoned to hearings by Parliament on fifteen occasions in 2018. It was inspected by the Court of Audit, which referred to it as a “benchmark independent institution regarding nuclear safety matters” . It welcomed foreign peers to address the management of radioactive materials and wastes during the course of the Artémis mission and again reported on its actions in this field during the IAEA Joint Convention review meeting. It is also involved in exchanges with the general public on the conditions for the continued operation of the 900 MWe reactors, as part of the consultation process around the fourth periodic safety review of these reactors. By implementing the action principles defined in its multi- year strategic plan, ASN more particularly made progress in two areas: field inspections and international outreach. Increasing the efficiency of ASN actions in the field The points requiring particular attention, in all areas, are today mainly to be found in the field, as are therefore ASN’s oversight actions. In 2018, the ASN inspectors carried out more than 1,800 inspections. This figure encompasses a variety of methods: from a one-day inspection by an inspector on a precise topic, to an “in-depth” review involving about ten inspectors for a week, analysing the various aspects of risk control on a site, such as the inspection held on the Gravelines NPP in May 2018. Several changes were made to field inspections in 2018. Firstly, ASN reinforced the targeting of inspections on the facilities and activities with the most significant potential consequences, in accordance with the graded approach principle defined in its multi-year strategic Plan. Thus in the medical field, the inspections of fluoroscopy- guided interventional practices, where the risks are highest, were more numerous, while the number of computed tomography inspections fell significantly. Targeting will continue to be optimised in the coming years, notably by taking advantage of innovative Olivier GUPTA –Director General Montrouge, 21 March 2019 Accountability: a duty and a requirement EDITORIAL BY THE DIRECTOR GENERAL 6  ASN report on the state of nuclear safety and radiation protection in France in 2018