3.4 Raising the awareness of professionals and cooperating with the other administrations Regulation is supplemented by awarenessraising programmes designed to ensure familiarity with the regulations and their application in practical terms appropriate to the various professions. ASN aims to encourage and support initiatives by the professional organisations that implement this approach by issuing best practices and professional information guides. ASN issues the “Avoiding accidents” data sheets in the field of BNIs and transport, “Operating Experience Feedback” sheets, or “Patient safety” bulletins in the medical field, with the aim of sharing its OEF analyses. Awareness-raising also involves joint actions with other administrations and organisations which oversee the same facilities, but with different prerogatives. One could here mention the labour inspectorate, the medical devices inspectorate work by the ANSM, the medical activities inspectorate work entrusted to the technical services of the Ministry of Health, or the oversight of small-scale nuclear activities at the Ministry of Defence entrusted to the Armed Forces General Inspectorate. 3.5 Information about ASN’s regulatory activity ASN attaches importance to coordinating Government departments and informs the other administration departments concerned of its inspection programme, the follow-up to its inspections, the penalties imposed on the licensees and any significant events. To ensure that its inspection work is transparent, ASN informs the public by placing the following on its website asn.fr: ∙its resolutions and decisions; ∙inspection follow-up letters for all the activities it inspects; ∙approvals and accreditations it issues or rejects; ∙incident notices; ∙the results of reactor outages; ∙its thematic publications on specific subjects. 4 Monitoring the impact of nuclear activities and radioactivity in the environment 4.1 Monitoring discharges and the environmental and health impact of nuclear activities 4.1.1 Monitoring of discharges The BNI Order of 7 February 2012 and amended ASN resolution 2013-DC-0360 of 16 July 2013, set the general requirements applicable to any BNI with regard to their water intake and their discharges of radioactive or chemical substances. In addition to these provisions, in its resolution 2017-DC-0588 of 6 April 2017, ASN defined the conditions for water intake and consumption, effluent discharge and environmental monitoring applicable more specifically to PWRs. This resolution was approved by the Minister for Ecological and Solidarity-based Transition in an Order of 14 June 2017. Apart from the above-mentioned general provisions, ASN resolutions set specific requirements for each facility, more particularly the limits for water intake and discharge of radioactive or chemical substances. Monitoring discharges from BNIs The monitoring of discharges from an installation is essentially the responsibility of the licensee. The ASN requirements regulating discharges stipulate the minimum checks that the licensee is required to carry out. This monitoring focuses on the liquid or gaseous effluents (monitoring of the activity of discharges or concentrations and flows of chemical substances discharged, characterisation of certain effluents prior to discharge, etc.) and on the environment around the facility (checks during discharge, samples of air, water, milk, grass, etc.) with regard to all pertinent parameters for characterising the impact of the facility on humans and the environment. The results of this monitoring are recorded in registers transmitted to ASN every month. The BNI licensees also regularly transmit a certain number of discharge samples to an independent laboratory for cross- analysis. The results of these “crossanalyses” are sent to ASN. This programme of cross-analyses defined by ASN is a way of ensuring that the accuracy of the measurements taken by the licensee laboratories is maintained over time. The inspections carried out by ASN Through dedicated inspections, ASN ensures that the licensees actually comply with the regulations binding upon them with regard to the management of discharges and the environmental and health impact of their facilities. Every year, it carries out about 90 inspections of this type, split among the following three topics: ∙prevention of pollution and management of detrimental effects and non-radiological hazards; ∙water intake and effluent discharge, monitoring of discharges and the environment; ∙waste management. Each of these topics covers both radiological and non-radiological aspects. Every year, ASN carries out 10 to 20 inspections with sampling and measurement. They are generally unannounced and are run with the support of specialist, independent laboratories appointed by ASN. Effluent and environmental samples are taken for radiological and chemical analyses. Finally, every year, ASN carries out several reinforced inspections which aim to check the organisation put into place by the licensee to protect the environment; the scope of the inspection is then broadened to cover all of the above-mentioned topics. Within this context, situational exercises can be carried out to test the organisation implemented for pollution management (see chapter 10). Accounting of BNI discharges The rules for accounting of discharges, both radioactive and chemical, are set in the general regulations by amended ASN resolution 2013-DC-0360 of 16 July 2013 relative to control of the detrimental effects and the impact of BNIs on health and the environment. These rules were set so as to guarantee that the discharge values declared by the licensees, notably those considered in the impact calculations, will in no case be under-estimated. For discharges of radioactive substances, accounting is not based on overall measurements, but on an analysis per radionuclide, introducing the notion of a “reference spectrum”, listing the radionuclides specific to the type of discharge in question. The principles underlying the accounting rules are as follows: ∙radionuclides for which the measured activity exceeds the decision threshold for the measurement technique are all counted; ∙the radionuclides of the “reference spectrum” for which the measured activity is below the decision threshold (see box next page) are counted at the decision threshold level. 160 ASN Report on the state of nuclear safety and radiation protection in France in 2024 Regulation of nuclear activities and exposure to ionising radiation
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