Autorité de sûreté nucléaire
The Autorité de sûreté nucléaire ( ASN ; German Authority for Nuclear Safety ) controls the technical safety of nuclear facilities and compliance with radiation protection in France on behalf of the French government . Its aim is to protect the public, those employed in the nuclear industry, patients and the environment from the dangers of using nuclear energy and to educate citizens about these dangers.
Since June 13, 2006, the authority, based in Montrouge, has had a college of five commissioners who determine the general policy of the ASN according to the law on transparency and safety in relation to nuclear material . The ASN also consists of a general secretariat, a legal and an organizational department, seven operational units - the directorates - and eleven local directorates, which together cover the entire French territory . The local directorates are in Bordeaux , Caen , Châlons-en-Champagne , Dijon , Douai , Lyon , Marseille , Nantes , Orléans , Paris and Strasbourg . The ASN is an independent administrative authority, i. That is, it has its own area of responsibility but is under government supervision. The seat of the authority is Montrouge . In 2015 the agency had 483 employees and a total budget of around 80 million euros .
tasks
The ASN has three main areas of responsibility:
Operational safety
In order to guarantee the safety of nuclear plants, the ASN should develop regulations for the technically safe operation. Compliance with the regulations and the general safety of the systems are checked by the ASN through inspectors. She is also responsible for the licensing procedures in connection with nuclear facilities. This includes, for example, the building permit and the approval for commissioning and shutdown. In addition, it should develop regulations for the safekeeping of radioactive waste and monitor compliance with them.
Radiation protection
The ASN is to develop measures to prevent or limit health risks from ionizing radiation in industry , medicine and research , and to implement these together with other competent authorities. Furthermore, it should ensure the detection and tracking of ionizing radiation sources and monitor French territory for radioactivity .
The ASN prepares a crisis team in the event of an incident or accident in which people can be harmed by ionizing radiation .
Transport lock
Since June 12, 1997, the ASN has been tasked with controlling the transport of radioactive or fissile material for civil use. Securing the transport has two goals:
- Physical protection prevents the loss of weapons-grade nuclear material through disappearance, theft and misappropriation. The competent authorities for this are the Office of Defense and the Minister for Economy, Finance and Industry.
- Safety itself concerns the prevention of radiation damage and contamination as well as critical situations during the transport of radioactive material so that people and the environment are not harmed. This task is the responsibility of the ASN.
The monitoring of transports that are important for the national defense was, according to a decision of July 5, 2001 by the délégué à la sûreté nucléaire et à la radioprotection pour les activités et installations intéressant la Défense ( DSND ; German delegate for the nuclear safety and radiation protection for national defense related activities and facilities ).
Further tasks
In addition to the above-mentioned core tasks, the ASN provides the public and the mass media with information on nuclear safety and radiation protection.
In addition, it should take part in the activities of international organizations on nuclear safety and build bilateral relationships with nuclear safety authorities in other countries in order to enable an exchange of experiences.
activities
September 2017: Tricastin nuclear power plant closes
After the ASN had followed Edf's application for a renewed ten-year operating license for the Tricastin nuclear power plant in 2010 , it ordered the closure of the four reactors at the end of September 2017 due to the high risk of a dam breaking on the Donzère-Mondragon Canal on the Rhône as a result of an earthquake with a subsequent failure of emergency cooling due to flooding (similar to the situation at the Fessenheim nuclear power plant ).
criticism
In his text "L'Insécurité nucléaire" (The nuclear insecurity), the French anti-nuclear activist Stéphane Lhomme accuses the ASN of not taking all necessary measures and of providing the public with false information.
He does not necessarily see the problems in the diagnoses per se, but in the decisions that are made or not made on the basis of these diagnoses. Furthermore, he accuses the management of the ASN of not having any influence on the power plant operators ( EDF , AREVA , CEA etc.) or of even collaborating with them in secret.
He criticizes two points about the information that is made available to the public: it is basically completely unnecessary to provide a vast number of individual documents on the ASN website if the visitor cannot see which errors and malfunctions are repeatedly mentioned in different documents become. In addition, the question arises of who - apart from former participants and persistent activists - should find their way through a maze of information, much of which is unimportant.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ (Law No. 2006-686, French abbreviation loi TSN )
- ↑ ASN Report 2015 , accessed December 9, 2016.
- ↑ Tricastin scrap nuclear power plant - ASN extends term by 10 years. Linkszeitung , December 2, 2010. Retrieved October 13, 2017 .
- ^ Fessenheim and Tricastin: France fears the Fukushima scenario | Home | SWR news . In: swr.online . ( swr.de [accessed on October 13, 2017]).
- ↑ Stéphane Lhomme: L'insécurité nucléaire - Bientôt un Tchernobyl en France . In: Yves Michel (Ed.): Écologie . 2006, ISBN 2-913492-40-1 , pp. 251 .