The reform of the Institute for Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN), wanted by the government, did not pass. Several hundred IRSN engineers and researchers demonstrated Monday in Paris against the plan to merge the organization with the Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN), which, according to them, endangers safety itself.
“This merger is a step back 25 years,” said Philippe Bourachot, central CGT union representative speaking on behalf of the intersyndicale, close to the Ministry of Energy Transition, which is piloting the project. “We are afraid of being under the direct authority of the ASN, and therefore of losing the independence of our technical analyses, of potentially having pressure to issue technical opinions which would be more suited to what the Authority would like “, “even the operator”, that is to say EDF, Orano or the CEA, he adds.
“It is a nuclear accident that we can fear”
“We have taken 40 years to build an independent and internationally recognized security system in France, and the government would like to destroy it in four weeks”, adds François Jeffroy, central trade union representative of the CFDT, one of the three representatives unions to have met the Minister of Energy Transition Agnès Pannier-Runacher on Friday to explain the concerns of the staff.
“If there is a major safety problem in a facility, the reactors are not shut down for fun,” explains Véronique Loyer, project manager at IRSN. “For example on stress corrosion, it was EDF who asked to shut down the reactors. But to restart them, he must prove that safety is ensured. And there was an opinion (from the IRSN) saying no, this reactor, we cannot restart it without having repaired it because the safety conditions are not guaranteed. Tomorrow will we force the IRSN not to say its true position? she worries, fearing “a risk of loss of confidence” from the public. And behind, “it is a nuclear accident that we can fear”.
“EDF makes a short-term calculation by wanting to stabilize the cost of improving safety, and does not make a long-term calculation which is that of a long-term guarantee for decades of absence of accident”, adds another demonstrator, Nicolas Dechy, engineer. EDF has shut down part of its fleet and launched costly work to restore its power plants following in particular the uncompromising technical opinions issued by IRSN on the state of its reactors.
In the evening, the ecologists of the National Assembly published a statement estimating “that no argument justifies today to overthrow this exemplary and transparent system, by merging expertise and decision”.