Prevention of the Causes and Consequences of Criticality Accidents: Measures Adopted in France

It is important to guard against the risk of criticality accidents by seeking to prevent their occurrence through the elimination of their causes and also by taking steps to provide against their consequences. These two aspects are closely linked since the efforts made to elaborate preventive procedures are dictated by the importance of the repercussions which such accidents are liable to have in the human, economic and psychological spheres. The criticality accidents which have occurred in the nuclear industry, though small in number, do reveal the imperfect nature of the techniques adopted to prevent them, and they constitute the only available realistic basis for evaluating their consequences and developing suitable precautionary techniques. The authors give a detailed analysis of the known causes and consequences of past criticality accidents and on this basis make a number of comments in connection with the validity of traditional safety criteria, the probability of accidents for different types of operation, the characteristic accidents capable of serving as models, and the extent of possible radiological consequences. The measures adopted in France to limit the consequences of a possible criticality accident (location, design and lay-out of installations, accident detection dosimetry for exposed personnel) are briefly described after a short account of the criteria used in deciding on them. Finally, the authors discuss the economic implications of adopting particular precautionary measures and of applying them uniformly, taking due account of the question of reliability. (author)