Dince March 11, the National Assembly has been deliberating on the nuclear safety governance reform bill. The suspense lasts until the end, after a first rejection of the project by the National Assembly in the winter of 2023, and a new rejection of the first article, pronouncing the merger of the Institute of Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN ) and the Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN), in committee on March 5.
If this project is adopted, it will be the first time that a law concerning nuclear safety has been adopted without a broad consensus of national representation. The government will not have succeeded in obtaining everyone’s consent on the possibility of this reform, nor in convincing people of the absence of risks in carrying it out.
Why can this reform be dangerous? After all, its objective seems reasonable: to simplify the organization of nuclear safety control, while reaffirming the requirement for the highest levels of safety, to support the major future projects of the nuclear industry. The same goes for its principle: to bring together all the resources within the same entity, with a status ensuring its independence from the government and the industry.
However, specialists in nuclear safety and its workings identify three risks: first, the most immediate risk, that of culture shock. Nuclear safety control is inherently a sovereign matter. The ASN is one of the expressions of the State, and its internal culture is hardly different from that of the control administrations in other areas. It has no legal personality other than that of the State, the majority of its leaders are appointed by the President of the Republic, and the most important decisions in matters of nuclear safety remain the responsibility of the government, on the proposal of ASN. All this seems normal given the challenges for the country. But this state culture carries with it that of secrecy of deliberations and a weak propensity to report, age-old practices which are unlikely to be gotten rid of. Isn’t the decision to initiate this reform based on a report submitted to the Head of State immediately classified as defense secret?
The risk of eroding trust
In contrast, the IRSN is a State operator, without any administrative power, whose raison d’être is the progress of scientific knowledge and its sharing. Its status as a public establishment of an industrial and commercial nature opens it to the world, without granting it any privileges. Its experts do not need a detailed normative framework to analyze the safety architecture of a nuclear installation, to confront industry experts and to issue a scientific opinion on the relevance of the proposed safety provisions. But this scientific and open culture is no match for the sovereign culture.
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