and even deterioration of radiation protection. In addition, the inspections carried out on private practitioners employing staff reveal a lack of understanding of the regulatory radiation protection obligations in the Labour Code, with regard to both themselves and their employees. Finally, ASN found that several medical centres had not registered their X-ray emitting equipment and decided to initiate sanctions against a hospital. In 2025, ASNR will continue with its inspections in the priority sectors, that is radiotherapy, radio-surgery, nuclear medicine, FGIP and computed tomography. In radiotherapy, after conducting a review involving all the stakeholders, ASNR will update its inspection guidelines and will start its new four-year inspection programme in 2025. In nuclear medicine, it will adapt the frequency of the inspections to take better account of the radiation protection issues, notably for departments carrying out clinical trials. In radiotherapy and nuclear medicine, based on the lessons learned from the ESRs reported in recent years, it will continue with specific inspections on management of the accelerator calibration process and verification of non-contamination respectively. 1. SimpleRad – EANM EARL – Research4Life : earl.eanm.org/simplerad/ With regard to FGIPs, ASNR will continue with its targeted inspections on private practitioners employing staff. Finally, on the occasion of the work carried out to update ASN resolution 2019-DC-0667 on DRLs, having found inadequacies in correct use of Cone Beam Computed Tomography (CBCT) by dental surgeons as well as in the deployment of the optimisation approach, it will launch an inspections campaign in this field. It will thus provide the RNA with a chart enabling the dental surgeons to carry out a self-assessment. In regulatory terms, ASNR will in 2025 review ASN resolution 2019-DC-0667 of 18 April 2019 setting DRL values to update the values applicable to mammography procedures and CBCT. It will continue the preparatory work for revision of ASN resolution 2008-DC-0095 of 29 January 2008 setting out the technical rules for the elimination of effluents and waste contaminated by radionuclides. In addition, ASNR will in 2025 publish the lessons learned from the study it is conducting on teleradiology. Finally, the deployment of new therapy techniques and practices (radiotherapy, ITR) remains a subject requiring particular vigilance. ASNR will continue its work together with the various institutional stakeholders in the health field, the learned societies, and with the help of the Advisory Committees of Experts, in particular the Committee for the Analysis of new Techniques and Practices using Ionising Radiation (Canpri), notably with regard to flash therapy and the project group set up to define the procedures for evaluating adaptive radiotherapy, which will be deployed as of 2025. In therapeutic nuclear medicine, radiation protection issues for the patient, their entourage, and the workers, the management of effluent and waste, are a priority against the backdrop of the emergence of new radiopharmaceuticals, projected growth in the number of patients eligible for these new treatments, with limited infrastructures and with the out-patient method being the preferred choice for health care. ASNR will issue an opinion at the beginning of 2025 on the basis of the work done by IRSN, the Advisory Committee of Experts for Radiation Protection (GPRP) and the lessons learned from the SimpleRad(1) project run by the European Commission. THE INDUSTRIAL, VETERINARY AND RESEARCH SECTOR The licensees of the industrial, veterinary and research sector are characterised by their diversity: they are numerous and carry out their activities in structures of widely varying size and status; they also use ionising radiation sources for a wide variety of applications. With regard to radiation protection, ASN’s assessment of these licensees remains more or less unchanged and reflects a widely contrasting picture as in previous years. Among the nuclear activities in the industrial sector, industrial radiography and more particularly gamma radiography are priority sectors for ASN oversight owing to their radiation protection implications. ASN observes that the vast majority of companies maintained the necessary degree of rigorousness to meet the regulatory obligations concerning the organisation of radiation protection, training and dosimetric monitoring of the workers, the use of operators holding the required Certificate of proficiency in handling industrial radiology devices (CAMARI) and maintaining gamma radiography devices. However, significant efforts are still required on the part of many companies to correctly define the programme of verifications required by the Labour Code, implement it, correct any nonconformities found on this occasion and ensure the traceability of the corrections made. If the risk of incidents and the doses received by the workers are on the whole well managed by the licensees when this activity is performed in a bunker in accordance with the applicable regulations, ASN is still concerned by the observed shortcomings in the signalling of the operations area during on-site work, even if a slight improvement has been observed every year since 2022. ASN underlines that the lack of preparation and cooperation ahead of the work, between the ordering customers and the radiography contractors, is frequently one of the causes of these nonconformities. Progress is in particular needed regarding the content of the prevention plans, and familiarity with and implementation of the provisions contained in them. More generally, ASN considers that the ordering parties should, whenever possible, give priority to industrial radiography services in bunkers and not on the worksite. As recalled by the event that occurred in Colmar in the spring of 2024, the repercussions of a radiological incident (impossibility of returning the radioactive source to the secure position in the gamma ray projector) are often considerable given the precautions to be taken to manage it. When the radiographic inspection takes place in a bunker, the consequences of such incidents are far more limited, provided that they are detected before someone enters the bunker and approaches the radioactive source. In this respect, in nearly one in three inspections in 2024 (bunkers and worksites), the operators did not correctly use their radiation meters to confirm that the radioactive source was actually in the safe position, from the moment they began to approach the gamma ray projector. In the other priority sectors for ASN oversight in the industrial field (industrial irradiators, particle accelerators including cyclotrons, suppliers of radioactive sources and devices containing them) the state of radiation protection is considered to be on the whole satisfactory. With regard to suppliers, ASN considers that advance preparations for the expiry of the sources administrative recovery period (which by default is ten years), information for the purchasers regarding future source recovery procedures, and the checks prior to delivery of a source to a customer, are areas in which practices progressed by comparison with 2023, but still need to improve further. ASN Assessments ABSTRACTS – ASN Report on the state of nuclear safety and radiation protection in France in 2024 29
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NjQ0NzU=