Limitation of doses received by personnel in the power plants of Electricite de France

The size of the French nuclear power programme is mentioned in order to show the magnitude of the problem of dose limitation and to indicate the experience of Electricite de France (EDF) so far: 150 reactor-years and about one hundred shutdowns for refuelling and maintenance. The radiation protection principles applied by EDF to limit doses both at the design stage and during operation are stated and the steps taken to apply these principles are briefly described. The means by which the principles can be applied consist in utilization of the results from experience and comparisons between them and values from extensive R and D programmes. Some results are mentioned, namely for dose as a function of production, which is slightly below 0.3 man-sieverts per terawatt-hour. Studies performed a posteriori indicate that the costs of dose reduction are of the order of two million French francs per man-sievert eliminated for workers. Optimization in the strict sense has not been the subject of systematic application, since it is somewhat incompatible with decision making in the short term. However, application of the optimization process is not ruled out for individual studies as an aid to decision making. (author)