See glossary pages 33 to 36 Drawing from the American, British and Canadian examples, it resulted in the creation in January 1960 of the Atomic Installations Safety Commission (CSIA), tasked with examining the safety of the current and future facilities of the French Atomic Energy Commission (CEA). For the first time, based on the Anglo-Saxon model, a report was drawn up at the request of the experts, and analysed in 1962 during the design of EDF’s Chinon nuclear power plant (NPP). Presented by the licensee, this document set out an analysis of the risks and means of protection of the installation with the aim of obtaining from the public authorities a construction authorisation and then a commissioning authorisation. The decade of the 1960’s saw the development of the graphite-moderated gascooled reactors (GCRs) designed by the CEA, referred to as GasCooled Reactors (GCRs) in English. These reactors were officially abandoned in 1969, the year in which a core meltdown accident occurred on the reactor at EDF’s Saint-Laurent-des-Eaux NPP. In the mid-1970’s a national nuclear safety organisation began to develop, with the creation of an inspection body – the Nuclear Installations Central Safety Service (SCSIN) within the Ministry for Industry in 1973, and an expert assessment body, the French Institute for Nuclear Safety and Protection (IPSN), created within the CEA in 1976. In the early 1980’s, these bodies began to produce technical regulations, comprising a very small number of good practices guides, technical orders and ministerial guideline notices. These official documents were supplemented by policy documents written by the licensee. These documents jointly constituted the de facto regulations. The emergence of an independent and transparent nuclear oversight body The Three Mile Island accident in 1979 (see p. 12) was a real shock for the French nuclear experts and contributed directly to the introduction of a number of modifications on the nuclear facilities. Alongside the technical changes linked to the improvement in safety, the very organisation of oversight underwent changes with the aim of regulating the monitoring of NPPs. “Any accident is by definition unique. You have to go further and seek out the root causes. That is why we did what was done in France, and more broadly in Europe, following the Fukushima disaster, because there was a real need to take things beyond the particular circumstances encountered at Fukushima or Chernobyl.” Pierre-Franck Chevet ASN Chairman from 2012 to 2018 There can be no grounds for complacency about nuclear safety in any country. [...] Safety must always come first. Yukiya Amano Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) from 2009 to 2019 ••• 4 • Les cahiers Histoire de l’ASN • November 2023
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