ASN holds a hearing of the Director General of ITER concerning the progress of the project, changes to its organisation and monitoring of outside participants.

The ASN Commission regularly holds hearings of the main parties responsible for nuclear activities with regard to nuclear safety and radiation protection issues. On 20^th April 2017, it held a hearing of Bernard Bigot, the Director General of ITER Organization.

ITER Organization presented its new installation commissioning strategy, setting the future deadlines for the construction site up until 2035. This new strategy consists in phased construction of the various parts of the installation according to the nature of the plasmas used. ASN has no objection to this new strategy: the new deadlines proposed will allow progress to be made on certain R&D actions in the field of safety, more specifically for the detritiation¹ equipment and for the tritium breeding modules².

ITER Organization also presented a number of developments linked to the organisation of the project, as well as the state of progress of the construction of ITER and the primary upcoming milestones. ASN duly notes these organisational changes.

ASN also notes the efforts made by ITER Organization over the past two years to improve the monitoring of outside participants, in particular the domestic agencies³, which provide equipment for the project. ASN considers that these efforts must be continued and the actions taken must be reinforced. ASN will remain attentive to the adoption and sharing of a safety culture by the entire chain of outside participants, to compliance with the safety requirements by the outside participants and the ability of the ITER Organization teams to perform their monitoring duties.