IRRS follow-up mission to France - October 2017

39 9. REGULATIONS AND GUIDES 9.1. GENERIC ISSUES 2014 MISSION RECOMMENDATIONS, SUGGESTIONS R10 Recommendation: The regulatory body should complete the project for developing technical resolutions and guides in a timely manner. S16 Suggestion: The regulatory body should consider further clarifying the graded approach used in the regulations and guides for different facilities and activities. S17 Suggestion: ASN should consider setting out, in the regulations or guides, explicit criteria related to the analyses of incidents and accidents. R11 Recommendation: ASN should develop more detailed guidance for the review and renewal of regulations and guides. The guidance should also include regular assessment of the need to renew regulations including updated IAEA safety standards as an initiator for such renewal. Changes since the initial IRRS mission Recommendation 10: ASN has now completed 18 of 23 regulatory resolutions (decisions) for BNIs. This accounts for approximately 80 percent of the work (status was approximately 50 percent in 2014). ASN continues to finalise the missing resolutions and regulatory guides, most importantly, those related to periodic safety review, operating rules and the management system of the operators. ASN has implemented about 75 percent of the WENRA reference levels (RLs) in the national regulations. The most recent publications cover RLs related to NPP design and emergency preparedness. ASN continues to adopt new regulatory decisions for small scale nuclear activities and to revise the regulations resulting from the transposition of the European directive of December 2013 (Basic Safety Standards, BSS). ASN also participates in the drafting of the ministerial orders. ASN has developed a table tracking its compliance with all BSS articles and the schedule for updating the French regulations and guides. Some of the biggest changes are related to radon and radiation safety experts. Suggestion 16: ASN has a policy that most regulations and guides are applicable to all BNIs. In September 2015, ASN adopted a resolution establishing a classification of BNIs into three safety categories based on several criteria (thermal power, activity, …). This categorisation has not yet been widely utilised for establishing regulatory requirements based on a graded approach, however, the categorisation has been used in ASN’s internal procedures for grading the oversight measures and the signature level (see S3). For example, post-Fukushima actions were prioritised based on the BNI categorisation. ASN is also finalising the draft regulatory guide concerning the management of BNI modifications, where the licensee is required to determine its internal classification for different types of modifications. Until now, ASN has reviewed all the modifications. In the future, ASN expects the number of applications to decrease by 70 percent. ASN has also worked on clarifying the graded approach for the evolution of the regulatory framework for small-scale nuclear activities (see R7) and for enforcement measures (see R9).