Several hundred employees of IRSN, the nuclear safety expert in France, demonstrated again on Thursday in Paris to denounce a bill enacting the dismantling of their institute on which the Senate must vote on Tuesday. noted an AFP journalist.
“The IRSN is my home, it’s your protection”, “safety deserves better than DIY”, said the signs marking a procession opened by a coffin.
According to this project decided at the Elysée, the Institute of Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN) must be dismantled to join the Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN), the regulator of power plants, in order to “streamline”, according to the government, decisions linked to the relaunch of the atom (extension of reactors, construction of new ones).
“If we want nuclear power to be safe, we must keep an independent IRSN”
Since its announcement exactly a year ago on February 8, elected officials, associations and specialists have warned of a loss of autonomy of experts and transparency with regard to the public. “If we want nuclear power to be safe, we must keep an independent IRSN,” says Nicolas Dechy. For this engineer at IRSN for 13 years, the ASN, alone facing the State and industrialists, “will be under more pressure. And that’s what they want: to be able to twist the arm of ASN. It’s sad “.
Cyril Huet, crisis management specialist, warns of the announced “cutting up” of the IRSN, with the forced departure of security experts (external threats) and defense equipment, who will not join the ASN but go to the CEA and the Armed Forces.
“Today all the technical skills are within IRSN. Tomorrow, how can we look at the safety of an installation, for example the control and command of EPR reactors, without being interested in security, the risks of cyberattacks for example? “, he warns: “The system was simple. From now on we will need interfaces, and we are talking about fluidification! »
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