The French nuclear safety expert, IRSN, at the heart of a controversial reform project, defended its work on Wednesday, carried out “on scientific and technical bases”, in the face of an LR MP criticizing the safety system of being “too picky”.
“Obviously, as long as there is no accident, we can be suspected of doing too much. Moreover, I remind you that before the Fukushima accident, there was a trend of this type: security systems are too demanding etc,” underlined Jean-Christophe Niel, director general of the Institute of Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety, interviewed with his team at the National Assembly on the government project.
The latter, through a bill that it has not yet made public, wishes to merge the IRSN, the expert, with the Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN), the policeman of power plants, to be more effective in a context of relaunching the atom.
On Wednesday, LR MP for Haute-Savoie Christelle Petex-Levet questioned a corrosion phenomenon which last winter forced EDF to shut down part of its fleet.
“The IRSN had publicly expressed reservations about the relevance of maintaining operation during repairs,” she said. The parliamentarian argued that “an installation can operate with two emergency circuits”, and that in the United States safety makes it possible to “sleeve the affected pipes, that is to say, to wrap them in a layer healthy”.
“Is the French nuclear system too picky, or are the others too lax? ”, she asked.
On the contrary, for Karine Herviou, deputy director of the IRSN, the skills of the actors (IRSN, ASN, EDF, etc.) “made it possible to resolve this subject as best and as quickly as possible, taking into account the associated doubts and uncertainties” .
“We suspected cracks on all of the safety injection lines (…) which could possibly lead to a serious accident since this system makes it possible to supply the cooling circuit with water,” a- she explained, noting that “sleeving is not a French practice because you must then be able to control the evolution of a defect”.
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