French approach to regulatory review: Lessons learned from the experience of the last 20 years

Decommissioning activities have been performed in France since the early 1980s, even though no major decommissioning projects were actually undertaken until after 1990. In the first part of the paper, the regulatory aspects of current decommissioning projects, such as the first-generation nuclear power reactors and research and fuel cycle facilities, are described. The evolution of the regulatory framework since the beginning of the 1980's is also described; this occurred concurrently with the development of the operator's strategies, for example, EDF's strategy change from a care-and-maintenance period of 50 years to immediate decommissioning. The new regulatory framework, introduced in 2003, which allows only one decommissioning licence for the whole project, instead of the previous 2 or 3 licences is described. This system is based on an internal authorization and aims to give the licensee more flexibility and to allow the regulator to concentrate on the most important safety related issues. The licensee is hence enabled, under certain conditions, to authorize internally minor operations within the overall safety demonstration of the facility: The inventories of radioactive and toxic substances, and related hazards must not be substantially increased, design accidents must still be taken account of and the overall defense-in-depth concept should not be jeopardized. The paper gives the first feedback and lessons learned from this new regulatory approach, which emphasizes that the main challenge of decommissioning is not only technical but also organizational. The second part of the paper addresses the topic of safe termination of practices in France. A short introduction to the French approach for radioactive waste management is also presented. The paper explains the principles of the regulatory framework issued in 2006 regarding the complete clean up of facility structures, based on the defence-in-depth concept: understanding of the physical phenomenon (i.e. activation or contamination), modelling of this phenomenon, after operations radiological controls. The first French examples of declassified facilities and future perspectives are described. (author)