The French nuclear industry has been ordered to implement urgent safety improvements costing several billion euros after a nationwide stress-test of the country's major nuclear sites found they were vulnerable to major natural disasters such as that which struck the Japanese plant at Fukushima last March.
The French Nuclear Safety Authority, the Autorité de Sûreté Nucléaire (ASN), the industry's supreme regulator, announced a series of demands this week following its appraisal of the stress-test report, compiled by experts from its technical arm, the Institut de radioprotection et de sûreté nucléaire(IRSN) and which was delivered last November. The study was part of a European Union-wide review of the safety of nuclear installations prompted by the disaster at Fukushima, hit by an earthquake and a subsequent tsunami.
"We are not asking for these investments, we are imposing them," said André-Paul Lacoste, president of the ASN, after the watchdog delivered its conclusions to Prime Minister François Fillon and the principle French nuclear operators, EDF, Areva and the CEA, on Tuesday. "We judge that the plants can only continue to function with these investments [made] in the time span we set out. If not, we will halt them."
Carte des centrales nucléaires (©ASN)
The ASN has not called for any immediate closures of any of the plants, matching the conclusions of the IRSN stress test report in November, which found that they were sufficiently safe to be allowed to continue operating in their current state over the short term. However, it has demanded that they improve "their robustness in face of extreme conditions", referring to natural disasters such as earthquakes or flooding, and also the potential disasters that can be caused by an accumulation of human and technical accidents.
France is the world's most nuclear energy-dependent country, with about 75% of its electricity supplied by nuclear production.
The ASN calls for the creation of a "hard core" of material and organizational measures as recommended in the IRSN report. This involves the identification, at each plant, of which functions must remain in operation under any condition, including extreme crises, and the subsequent reinforcement of the equipment and procedures necessary to protect them.
These measures include "bunkerising" a crisis command centre in which staff can continue to work in the case of a disaster. The ASN estimates the cost of this to be 100 million euros per plant and involves 20 sites. It also demands that each of the current 58 reactors operating across the country, as well as for the EPR plant under construction at Flammanville, be equipped with an "ultimate" emergency standby diesel-powered motor generators to ensure an electric current source in the case of the regular grid closing down. The overall investment needed for this is expected to be considerable, given that each diesel motor, according to the ASN, could cost up to 50 million euros.
The ASN also requires each plant to create emergency water reservoirs and to install "hardened" batteries that are more resistant to potential crisis demands than those at present. Taking heed of the lessons of the Fukushima disaster, it has demanded that plants introduce measures to prevent nuclear fuel from exposure above water, the cost of which has not been calculated.
It has furthermore ruled that the industry must create a nuclear rapid intervention force, composed of several hundred people, capable of relieving staff at an accident-struck site within less than 24 hours.
The ASN has demanded that feasibility studies be carried out at every plant, including the nuclear fuel reprocessing site at La Hague, in Normandy, for setting up a system of protecting subterranean water pockets in case of serious accidents.