- 12 - The experience feedback from the Fukushima accident could take about ten years. As a first step it was felt that an immediate evaluation of the robustness of the facilities to extreme situations should be carried out. This is the goal of the complementary safety assessments, which led to an exceptional mobilisation of the licensees, experts, stakeholders and ASN. After the complementary safety assessments on the priority nuclear facilities, ASN considers that the facilities examined offer a sufficient level of safety requiring no immediate shutdown of facilities. At the same time, ASN considers that the continued operation of the facilities demands that their robustness to extreme situations be improved as rapidly as possible. Therefore in the first quarter of 2012, ASN will be imposing a range of requirements on the licensees and will tighten up the safety requirements concerning the prevention of natural hazards (earthquake and flooding), the prevention of risks linked to other industrial activities, subcontractor monitoring and how nonconformities are dealt with. The corresponding ASN decisions will be posted on the www.asn.fr website. ASN will subsequently ensure that the licensees comply with the hundred or so requirements it will have issued and take account of the new safety requirements it will have approved. ASN will also take into consideration the conclusions of the peer reviews conducted at the European level. ASN also considers that additional studies will need to be undertaken to complete certain aspects, in particular the initial analyses carried out by the licensees. It will send the licensees the corresponding requests in letters which will also be posted on its website. In the summer of 2012, ASN will present the progress of all of these measures. ASN will also continue the process of complementary safety assessments of nuclear facilities with lower priority, for which the reports have to be submitted by the licensees before 15th September 2012. ASN considers that these initial complementary safety assessments confirmed the benefits of such an innovative approach, complementing the existing safety approach. It envisages continuing this process of complementary assessment of safety margins by making it a mandatory component of the ten-yearly periodic safety reviews. Finally, ASN will continue to participate actively in all the analyses to be conducted worldwide, in order to gain a clearer understanding of the Fukushima accident.
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