ASN Report 2020

ASN periodically examines the strategies developed by EDF in these documents, in particular for the reactor periodic safety reviews. 2.4.2 Assessment of reactor operations Normal and degraded operation ASN observes that the vast majority of NPPs made significant progress in 2020 with respect to the rigorousness of monitoring in the control room and control of the installations. In most cases, this progress was accompanied by a clear reduction in the number of unauthorised excursions from the operating range and the number of failures to comply with the operating control rules. This improvement could be the result of the implementation on certain sites of action plans to reinforce rigorousness and process safety difficulties identified. It could also be explained by the measures adopted by EDF to manage the Covid‑19 pandemic: organisational changes were made to the working of the operating teams and, in order to limit contacts, this involved keeping access to the control room by other personnel to a minimum. This led to a calmer environment in the control rooms. ASN will be monitoring development of the situation with interest over the coming years and will continue to check deployment of the action plans initiated on this subject. However, on the majority of sites, ASN does observe an increase in the number of significant events. An analysis of their causes reveals that inappropriate documentation was used by the control team or that this documentation was incorrectly used. ASN also observes a significant rise in the average time taken to detect non- compliance with the operating technical specifications. The steps taken by EDF to manage the Covid‑19 pandemic mentioned in the previous paragraph led to a degree of isolation of the various actors and could be one of the causes of these developments. ASN will thus be reinforcing its vigilance with regard to the quality of the operating documentation and its correct use by the operating teams. The root causes of the delays in detecting non- compliances with the operating rules will have to be identified and dealt with. In 2020, the periodic tests were the cause of several generic significant events, owing to inappropriate implementation of the testing rules in the operating documents or test rules that are inconsistent with the rest of the general operating rules. ASN will be attentive to ensuring that EDF learns the appropriate lessons from these events. Operation in an incident, accident, or severe accident situation ASN carried out several inspections in 2020 on the organisational and technical arrangements made by EDF to deal with an incident and accident situation. Despite the health context, most of these inspections were carried out on site. A tightened inspection was in particular carried out in the Cattenom NPP. During these inspections, ASN checked application of the operating instructions applicable to an incident or accident situation. These inspections almost always include a simulation involving the EDF teams. During these inspections, management of operation in an incident or accident situation was considered to be satisfactory. However, as in 2018 and 2019, ASN found that certain operating documents contained errors, inaccuracies, or even instructions that were impossible to carry out. EDF is correcting the errors and inaccuracies detected within time-frames that are on the whole satisfactory, except when this correction depends on the EDF national engineering teams. In 2020, EDF activated its PUI for a fire outside the controlled area in the Belleville-sur-Loire NPP. The situation did not require any population protection measures. In 2020, a limited number of inspections on the emergency organ­ isation and resources were carried out owing to the health situ­ ation. They did however confirm the findings in previous years, that is a satisfactory level of assimilation of the organisation, preparedness and management principles for emergency situations. Finally, in 2021, ASN will continue to check the application of the provisions of its resolution 2017-DC-0592 of 13 June 2017 concerning the obligations on BNI licensees in terms of preparedness for and management of emergency situations and the content of the PUI. Work to ensure compliance with the provisions of this resolution is continuing, with deadlines staggered until 1 January 2022. ASN will continue to check the steps taken by EDF with regard to emergency organisation in the event of an external hazard of extreme intensity. The Covid‑19 pandemic health crisis required the adoption of special measures to guarantee the safety of EDF’s Nuclear Power Plants (NPPs). The travel restrictions put in place by the Government in the spring of 2020 at first severely reduced EDF’s ability to carry out scheduled maintenance work during the reactor refuelling outages. Faced with this situation, EDF decided to extend the theoretical duration of all the scheduled outages and to postpone or cancel certain others. ASN made sure that the maintenance and outage operations were pushed back by EDF in compliance with the applicable safety rules. In terms of organisation, EDF adopted measures to guarantee the safety of the installations, while complying with the health rules in force. Many members of staff were assigned to home-working. For the persons required to be physically present in the NPPs, notably for the control teams, steps were taken to minimise contacts within the teams and avoid crossovers between the various teams. Steps were taken to guarantee a response capacity in an emergency. ASN found that EDF paid particular attention to ensuring that the safety of the facilities remained the number one priority for everyone. Special attention will also need to be given to prioritisation and correct performance of the activities which were postponed for several months owing to the health crisis; these postponements entail an increase in the activities to be performed in the coming months and provisions will be required to ensure that this can be done in compliance with the safety rules. ASN asked EDF to draw conclusions from this period, notably with regard to the resulting organisational changes. THE IMPACT OF COVID‑19 296 ASN Report on the state of nuclear safety and radiation protection in France in 2020 10 – THE EDF NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS