Nuclear safety: the unions denounce a reform that is too sudden and harmful

The unions of the two nuclear safety organizations in France, whose executive announced the surprise merger project, denounced on Wednesday March 8 a "destabilize" harmful to the entire sector.

Uniting their voices in a first joint press release since the announcement of this merger in February, the four unions of the Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN) and the Institute for Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN) expressed "unanimously their serious concerns."

The ASN with its 500 agents is the nuclear police and the IRSN with 1.750 employees the scientific police of nuclear safety.

The government announced on February 8 its intention to abolish the IRSN in order to "streamline the examination process" at a time when the Elysée is carrying out a program for the construction of new reactors.

"(...) the maintenance of such a reform of the merger of ASN and IRSN will inevitably lead to a destabilization of our organizations which will harm our ability to instruct and decide quickly, in a motivated and rigorous manner" , fear the signatories of the CFDT, CGT, Unsp-FO and CFE-CGC.

And this, according to them, at the worst time, since the relaunch of the atom decided in 2022 by the Elysée will have to find both the necessary arms and the support of public opinion.

"Our rigour, our skills, our independence and our transparency are internationally recognized and are the basis of the credibility of the current system", argued the ASN and IRSN staff representatives.

Far from rejecting the possibility of a reform, the four unions criticize a project whose announcement was "sudden", "without an impact study", without making an inventory or "identifying any areas of progress that may be necessary ".

They denounce the absence of a defined budgetary framework, of a precise reflection of the missions concerned by the merger and of concrete guarantees for the staff of the two structures.

Fusion risks wasting "a lot of time and enormous resources" at a time when the French nuclear industry will, on the contrary, need the availability of teams to provide "rigorous, agile, transparent and independent controls".

According to them, "the maintenance of transparent, independent and effective control and expertise in terms of nuclear safety is an essential guarantee for the safety of workers, the population, the environment and installations".

“It is also THE condition for the societal acceptability of this revival” of civil nuclear power, they warn.