Reporting non-conformant activities to ASN - Whistle-blower

ASN is the competent authority for receiving and assessing reports of irregularities, breaches or misconducts when it concerns nuclear safety and radiation protection in nuclear activities.

The purpose of this portal is to receive reports of irregularities encountered in nuclear facilities or during activities entailing an ionising radiation risk, such as the transport of radioactive substances or medical practices. This is a direct link between ASN and someone wishing to alert it of something of which they have become aware and which could present a risk to the general interest.

Examples of irregularities that could be reported are the falsification of documents or measurement results.

Exceptions to use of this portal

This portal is not designed to receive alerts covered by certain regulatory provisions such as the notification of significant events or certain cases, such as breaches of the Labour Code, which are subject to specific regulations. These notifications shall be made to the competent administrations via their specific means.
A non-conforming labour situation must for example be reported to the competent labour inspectorate. ASN’s area of competence only covers nuclear power reactors.

Finally, this portal is NOT a means to alert ASN of an ongoing emergency situation.

Reminder of whistle-blower regulations

ASN receives and considers reports following the regulation defined in the ACT 2016-1691 of 9 December 2016 on transparency, the fight against corruption and the modernisation of economic life (known as the Sapin II Act), modified in March 2022, and the decree 2022-1284 of 3 October 2022. This regulation corresponds to the transposition in French law of the Directive (EU) 2019/1937 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 October 2019 on the protection of persons who report breaches of Union law. Therefore, a whistleblower from the European Union reporting to ASN should be protected following the same rules.

In particular, the European directive enforces rules for the support of whistleblowers, as well as protection against potential retaliation.

Finally, ASN internal rules guarantee the strict confidentiality of the data transmitted, including identity of the whistleblower. They may however be transmitted to the judicial authorities if they so request.

According to the law abovementioned, if I am to be considered a whistleblower:

• I must be an individual, in other words I am not submitting the alert as a company, NGO, association, etc.;
• I must be acting in good faith, in other words the irregularities I am reporting can, in my opinion, prejudice the general interest;
• I do not receive a direct monetary advantage for the report;
• the subject of the report must be a crime or misdemeanour, or must concern a violation or hiding a violation of a legal principle or there must be a threat to the general interest;
• the facts, information or documents, regardless of form or medium, shall not be covered by national defence confidentiality, medical confidentiality, the judicial procedure confidentiality or the professional confidentiality of a lawyer;
• I am personally aware of the facts when they have not been collected within my professional activities.

The contact details of the whistle-blower as required by the form are needed so that ASN can:

• acknowledge receipt of the alert;
• contact them if clarification is required;
• inform them if action has been taken following their alert.

Additional information

In order to submit an anonymous alert, please send a letter to ASN headquarters.

For confidentiality reasons, please use a double envelope. The inside envelope must be marked "CONFIDENTIEL – SIGNALEMENT D’UNE ALERTE".

To access the alert reporting form, select one of these two options: