These inspections have covered about a quarter of the suppliers with safety-significant business, checking specific inspection indicators, more particularly linked to the suppliers’ responsibilities in the tracking and recovery of disused sealed radioactive sources from the users in order to dispose of them appropriately, taking into account the radiation risks they present for people and the environment. ASN considers the radiation protection situation associated with the radionuclide distribution activity to be satisfactory on the whole. The large majority of licensees meet the main requirements and assume their responsibilities adequately (transfer of documents on delivery, tool for tracking the delivered sources or devices, setting up the source recovery streams, transmission of information to IRSN). These inspections also provided the opportunity to increase the source suppliers’ awareness of regulatory changes, particularly those concerning the measurements and the application of the Initial Verifications (IV) and Periodic Verifications (PV) systems which replace the former third-party and internal “technical controls”. Moreover, the defining of the conditions of recovery of sealed radioactive sources prior to their delivery between the suppliers and customers has improved with respect to 2021, thereby enabling the user to better understand the obligations and conditions of recovery of expired sealed sources (ten years counting from the first registration date figuring on the supply form). Nevertheless, these inspections and the analysis of significant event reports have also revealed points requiring particular attention, notably the fact that all the pre-delivery verifications are not always carried out by all the suppliers. These verifications, for which the supplier must take appropriate organisational measures (by computer blocking or verifications during actual preparation of the order), include verification of the existence of an administrative document (license or registration or notification acknowledgement) authorising the customer to hold the source concerned, verification of the fact that the delivery of the source in itself will not, considering the other sources already delivered by the supplier, result in exceeding of the customer’s license limits, and lastly that the delivery address is consistent with the authorised holding sites. Lastly, four ESRs were rated level 1 on the INES scale in 2022. These incidents concerned the discovery of sealed radioactive sources on land reassigned for public use, the discovery of an area of limited contamination on a radionuclide production site, the jamming of gamma radiography source (see point 3.1.1) during measuring system calibration operations having led to inappropriate actions by the operator, and the unjustified exposure of a worker to a freight inspection scanner. The consequences on the environment and the workers concerned nevertheless remained limited. LA RÉUNION MARTINIQUE GUADELOUPE Production for research (non-medical) Production for research (medical and non-medical) Production for in vivo diagnosis (primarily) and for research (medical or non-medical) On stand-by Planned LOCATION OF CYCLOTRONS IN FRANCE ASN Report on the state of nuclear safety and radiation protection in France in 2022 263 08 • 08 • Sources of ionising radiation and their industrial, veterinary and research applications 01 07 13 AP 04 10 06 12 14 03 09 05 11 02
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