Technical and scientific expertise on the safety of nuclear power plants must be made public “upstream” of any decision, with a view to the controversial reform of safety governance, demands an advisory body in an opinion published Monday.
In its opinion, the High Committee for Transparency and Information on Nuclear Safety (HCTISN) requests that the number and quality of scientific and technical risk assessments upstream of decisions be maintained or even reinforced.
These risk assessments must be made public, at least for the most important decisions; civil society must know on what scientific and technical bases choices are made in matters of nuclear safety and radiation protection, underlines the HCTISN.
This body brings together a diversity of actors – parliamentarians, representatives of associations, local information commissions (CLI), unions, operators (EDF, Framatome) – and its opinion is intended to be a compromise.
After an opinion from the National Council for Ecological Transition (CNTE) delivered on Wednesday, this other consultative body therefore in turn places reservations on the bill aimed at founding the Institute for Radioprotection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN), the technical expert of the nuclear, and the Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN), which makes decisions on power plants, such as authorizations to start or restart reactors.
The HCTISN considers that certain points may indeed be set back from the law in force and others are left unresolved or are intended to be clarified later by the internal regulations of the new entity, the ASNR.
Six months after failing to have this project adopted in Parliament, then slipped into a legislative amendment, the government put out for consultation a new text, which reorganizes the governance of security in order to streamline decisions in the midst of the relaunch of nuclear power.
Its detractors, elected officials, experts, UFC-Que Choisir… fear less independence of expertise and a loss of transparency.
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