Contrôle review n°157 - ASN report: nuclear safety and radiation protection in France in 2003, abstracts

The year 2003 saw no major events affecting nuclear safety, despite a number of alerts, in particular due to exceptional meteorological conditions. It saw the Nuclear Safety Authority devote considerable efforts to developing its radiation protection activities. 2003 was also marked by the effective implementation or the announcement of major decisions affecting the nuclear industry and concerning nuclear safety and radiation protection.

acilities subject to the control of the Nuclear Safety Authority experienced no worthly of note events in 2003. We could even say that the year saw few incidents classified at significant levels on the INES scale. This overall tendency should not however mask a number of trends which call on us to maintain a high level of vigilance.

First of all, the expanded scope of responsibility of the Nuclear Safety Authority now leads it to look at new types of incidents, occurring in places which hitherto were not within its remit: thus significant exposure of two operators from a control agency was detected during the use of gammagraphs in non-nuclear installations such as refineries. Similarly, a leak of radioactive waste from a hospital pipe and the destruction of a radioactive control source by a maintenance error in a brewery are both incidents which fortunately had no effect on the persons involved, but do reveal the potential dangers that exist for a large number of radioactivity users.

André-Claude LACOSTE