The role of research in nuclear regulation: A French perspective

Roughly speaking, the French Nuclear Protection and Safety Institute's role is similar in the French situation to the NRC administration role but with less authority role, which corresponds to another body in France. They define themselves as a technical support of the safety authorities. On the other hand, they have their own research laboratories. Among them, the most famous are the Phebus reactor and the Cabri reactor about which we have heard a lot these two days. They work on safety but also on protection of man and environment, management of accident conditions, security of transport, and safeguards. They have a relationship with utilities and with government authorities. With the utilities they have two types of technical evaluations. They make detailed technical studies of the safety reports presented to the authorities by the utility. On the research side, they participate in common research programs to resolve issues and to increase knowledge and understanding about safety related questions. With the governmental authorities, their role is to give advice on safety reports of existing or being-built installations and on more general policy questions like, for example, the safety principle to apply to the next generation of power plants. The decisions are left to the safety authorities, but they give a lot of advice and detailed studies about questions of safety