Repères - N°48 / March 2021 - The IRSN magazine - 23

IRSN

In February 2013,
IRSN measured the contamination level of a
school that was evacuated and then
decontaminated in Kawamata, Japan.

Gilles Compagnat at the ANCCLI-IRSN seminar
on post-Fukushima safety issues.

Ten years of monitoring...

Since 2011, the Institute has been involved
in monitoring developments in the situation in Japan, ranging from emergency
management, impacts on the environment
and health to facility condition, dismantling, social consequences, and so on.
Eight annual news bulletins have been
published on irsn.fr. Locally, IRSN is
involved in several technical projects such
as dismantling, as well as community
projects, such as the Fukushima Dialogue
initiative (see p. 6).
n

2018 saw the renewal of the IRSN and IAEA
cooperation agreement. Jean-Christophe Niel, the
Institute's Director General (left), and Juan Carlos
Lentijo, IAEA Deputy Director General and Head of the
Department of Nuclear Safety and Security (right).

An international presence

The Institute participated in the peer review
of the conclusions of European stress tests,
an international action similar to France's
complementary safety assessments. It also
participated in several IAEA 3 activities.
In 2013, a request was made to IRSN to
organize a seminar in Japan on serious
accidents, during which it presented the
French hardened safety core initiative. It
took part in ETSON 4 network safety
discussions.
" We are present in all the major international organizations to share our experience
on the accident, the lessons learned, and
to compare safety improvements, " Herviou
concluded.

into place following commission member
Gilles Compagnat's trip to Japan in 2014.
During his stay, he met with the former
director of the Fukushima Daini plant,
located 11 km south of the damaged facility, where the disaster was averted.
" Employees managed to pull 9 km of electric
cables to restart the pumps. This prevented
the hydrogen from exploding, " he explained.
In 2015, CLI set up a technical commission
on organizational and human factors,
which studies all significant safety events
from this perspective. n

1. Haut Comité pour la transparence
et l'information sur la sécurité nucléaire.
2. Association nationale des comités
et commissions locales d'information.
3. International Atomic Energy Agency.
4. European Technical Safety Organization
Network.
5. Plan particulier d'intervention.

Find out more:

Involvement: Understanding Fukushima
in France irsn.fr/fuku-lessons
Complementary safety assessments:
The condition of nuclear facilities
post-Fukushima irsn.fr/ECS-EN
IRSN briefs on the Fukushima Daiichi
accident irsn.fr/fukushima-EN
OpenRadiation openradiation.org/en

Vigilant local commissions

Since the Fukushima Daiichi accident, the
Golfech (Tarn-et-Garonne department)
CLI's actions have been inspired by the
feedback from it.
When the special intervention plans (PPI 5)
were applied to a radius of 20 km around
French power plants, an awareness campaign was organized, targeting 130,000
additional residents. Weekly ambient radioactivity measurements are carried out
using the OpenRadiation sensor supplied
by IRSN. This tool, connected to a smartphone, allows volunteer citizens and communities to share these measurements on
a website thereby contributing to improving
knowledge on the local environment.
Regarding safety, " commission members
have been visiting the Golfech power plant
since 2016 to monitor the deployment of the
hardened safety core, " (see p. 8) reported
Véronique Auguste, Project Manager for
this CLI. This level of vigilance was put

Two IRSN experts measure radioactivity during
an IAEA exercise near Fukushima Daiichi.

Page 23 - Repères No. 48 - March 2021

http://www.irsn.fr https://www.irsn.fr/fuku-lessons https://www.irsn.fr/ECS-EN https://www.irsn.fr/fukushima-EN https://www.openradiation.org/en http://www.irsn.fr/ECS

Repères - N°48 / March 2021 - The IRSN magazine

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