The IRSN newsmagazine

January 2012

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First lessContents Fukushima Special Report
04.. Accident

08.
8. Information

22. Research
es rchCRISISLESSONS LEARNED 12 to 23

04 to 11

In Japan

Nuclear safety

Nuclear disaster.

Complementary Safety Assessments.

Earthquake plus tsunami – a catastrophic combination 04

Analysing the resistance of French facilities

13

Stress test. Close-up of the Gravelines nuclear

In France

power plant

Mobilisation. Understanding Fukushimafrom a distanceRadiological impact

06

Radiological impact on the Japanese population.

Information activity. Taking on the challengeof transparency

1708

Initial evaluation map

20

Symbiose software. Monitoring environmental

20

Supportreleases

Franco-Japanese activities
tailored to the emergency

Téléray network. Working towards improved

Education. The experts re-instilled
confidence in the school community
at the French-Japanese school in Tokyo

environmental monitoring

Emergency response10

Three questions for. Didier Champion, Head of thecollective work conducted at IRSN concerning crisis
management in the event of a nuclear accident or incident
in or affecting France 21

Emergency services. Accompanying a rescue
excavation mission

10

Museum. Controlling radioactivity in art 10
Airline company. Reassuring aircrews at Air France 11
Navigation. Assessing risks
at Louis Dreyfus Armateurs

Research
Areas of scientific research. The Fukushima crisis
highlights the avenues to be explored 22

11

Media. Indicating the measures to be taken
for Radio France personnel

11

Dosimeter supplier. Maintaining quality 11
French Embassy. Explaining the situation
to French expatriates

11

Robotics. Protecting workers 11

Repères I January 201221

2

Editorial

Cover : damaged reactors at the Fukushima
Daiichi nuclear power plant after the accident.

The “hardened safety core”
inspired by Fukushima

13. Nuclear
N ea safety
sa y

About
RepèresEnhancing nuclear safety
is the main drive of every action of IRSN.
Within this scope the Institute takes the commitment to make the results of its research, studies
and reports accessible for all professionals
involved in nuclear safety, security and radiation
protection, as well as the public and civil society.
That is why the Institute publishes a quarterly
French newsmagazine, Repères, who provides
information on IRSN’s activities in the fieldsof research, radiological surveillance, nuclear
safety and security, and reflects the broad extent
of its expertise. The international significanceof the Fukushima accident prompted us topropose an English translation of our special
issue focused on the accident and on the first
lessons drawn by IRSN regarding nuclear safety.

DigitalGlobe; Grégoire Maisonneuve/IRSN; Noak/Le bar Floréal/IRSN

T

he Fukushima-Daïchi NPP accident
was the first occurence showing thatan extreme natural event, that generated stress levels far beyond nuclear power
plant design-basis values, could lead to acore meltdown accident. It also showed how
the massive destruction of a site and of thesurrounding infrastructures could delay andcomplicate all accident management operations. However, the world's nuclear reactors
were built without making allowance forrisks associated with such events, becauseof their extremely improbable character.
In order to avoid the re-occurence of such
accidents, IRSN considers that checking
existing safety margins against these
extreme hazards, or making adjustments here and there to optimise margins, is not enough. What is needed isan additional level of defence-in-depth
at nuclear facilities to ensure that theirvital safety functions remain operational
over a sufficient period of timein the event of any physicallypossible environmental hazard.
This is what the Institute meansby “hardened core” safety,
a notion that it intends topromote internationaly.

Jacques Repussard,
Director General of IRSN.
Olivier Seignette/Mikaël Lafontan/IRSN

Repères – Published by: Institut de radioprotection et de sûreté nucléaire – 31, avenue de la Division-Leclerc, 92260 Fontenay-aux-Roses – Phone: +33 (0)1 58 35 88 88 – Website: www.irsn.fr – Email:reperes@irsn.fr – Executive editor: Jacques Repussard – Managing editor: Marie-Pierre Bigot – Editor: Catherine Roulleau – Assistant editor: Isabelle Cussinet – Reading committee:
Michel Brière and Jérôme Joly – Editorial assistance, editing, editing secretarial services, art direction, production: Emapress – Illustrations: Charlotte Heuzé – Computer graphics: Hervé Bouilly– Printed by: Galaxy (72) – Printed on Cyclus print – ISSN : 2103-3811 – January 2012.

3

Repères I January 2012

CRISIS > JAPAN

Nuclear disaster

Earthquake plus tsunami –a catastrophic combination
On Friday 11 March 2011, at 14:46 local time (i.e. 06:46 in France), an 8.9-magnitude
earthquake occurred 80 km off the eastern coast of Japan’s island of Honshu, causing
a loss of electrical power at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. The reactors
shut down and the emergency generators took over. The earthquake, however, hadalso triggered a tsunami and, 55 minutes later, 14-metre waves hit the coast, goingover the top of the plant’s protective walls. The emergency generators were flooded
and the water intakes used for cooling the reactor were damaged. Below is a brief
account of what happened at the nuclear power plant and the repercussions.
Japanese nuclear
facilities

Tomari
PACIFICOCEAN

KashiwazakiO gawaKariwaShika
Ohi
Fukushima 1
MihamaFukushima 2
Tokaï
Taka
Tokyo
ShimaneHamaokaGi
Monju
Tsuguraata
Fugen
0
200 km
ai

4

3

2

100 m
0

11 March 2011
Core meltdown. Reactors 4, 5 and 6 hadalready been shut down for maintenance. The earthquake caused theautomatic shutdown of the three reactors still in operation, namely reactors
1, 2 and 3. It also led to the loss of thereactor off-site power supplies, causing the on-site power supplies (emergency diesel generators) to take over.
Fifty-five minutes later, a 14 metres
tsunami wave damaged the plant’s
seawater intakes, shutting down theemergency diesel generators of reactors 1 to 4. This was what caused thecore meltdown in reactors 1, 2 and 3,
leading to radioactive release. The
meltdown required venting operations to be carried out to bring down
the pressure inside the containmentbuildings. I

Repères I January 2012

07:36, 12 March
Reactor 1. An explosion occurred at the
top of reactor 1. A few hours earlier,venting had been started to reduce
containment pressure. Given the loss ofcooling system, the plant manager
decided to inject seawater into the reactor core as a last resort. I

13:00, 14 March
Reactor 3. An explosion occurred at the
top of reactor 3. The containment had
been vented 24 hours earlier. Seawater was injected to cool down the reac-4

tor core. There was also concern about
the spent fuel storage pool and on 17
March a helicopter dropped seawater
onto it, but with little success. The nextday, fire fighting systems were used tomake up for evaporation. I

22:00, 14 March
Reactor 4. A fire of unknown origin
broke out in the fuel pool area of reactor 4 (which had already been shut
down for maintenance, with the coreunloaded). In the evening, another fire
broke out, this time in the northwest of1

CRISIS > JAPAN
Infographics: Hervé Bouilly - Source: IRSN

The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant2

Fukushima Daiichi (Daiichi
means “number one”)
is a nuclear power plant
operated by TEPCO, the Tokyo
Electric Power Company.
It consists of six Americandesigned boiling water reactors
with a power output of 460
to 1100 MW. The reactors
were built in the 1970s.

13DigitalGlobe

4

The four damaged reactors.

Atmospheric contamination
The series of decompressions andexplosions resulted in the significant
release of radionuclides such as
iodine-131 and caesium-137. A few
hours after the accident began,
the Japanese authorities decided
to evacuate 80,000 people within
a 20 km radius of the site and advised
those living within a 20-30 km radius
to stay indoors.

5

6

Reactors 5 and 6
Built more recently, these reactors arelocated ten metres above the first fourand resisted better. One of the four
generators of reactor 6 was used
to cool the spent fuel storage poolsof reactors 5 and 6 (which had alreadybeen shut down for maintenance).
Following the explosion in the fuel poolarea of reactor 4, openings were madein the pool area cladding to speed up
the removal of radiolytic hydrogen.

Marine contamination
The marine environment suffered significant radioactive contamination.
This was due to contaminated water from the plant being discharged
directly into the sea up to around 8 April and, to a lesser extent,
to fallout from some of the radionuclides (e.g. caesium-137) released
to the atmosphere between 12 and 22 March.

the building, followed by an explosionin the fuel pool area. Water was poured
onto the pool through a concrete pumparm. I

22:10, 14 March
Reactor 2. An explosion occurred at thebottom of reactor 2. A loss of coolingsystem had been reported at 8:00 thatmorning. Seawater was injected tocool down the reactor core. I

Different reactor technologies
Although all the nuclear power reactors operating in the world today make use of fission
energy 1 to generate electricity, their design varies considerably. The Fukushima plant, forexample, is equipped with boiling water reactors (BWR). French plants operated by EDF,
the national electric utility, have pressurised water reactors (PWR). There are two majordifferences between these technologies:
G The size of the containment building, which is much smaller in BWRs, causingpressure to rise faster;
G The cooling system. In BWRs, the steam generated during core cooling goes directly
to the turbine. PWRs, however, have an intermediate system: the reactor coolant system
cools itself by transferring its heat to a secondary cooling system that drives the turbine.
1. Phenomenon in which the nucleus of an atom splits, giving off a very large quantity of energy.

5

Repères I January 2012

CRISIS > FRANCE

The control room of IRSN’s emergency
response centre (CTC) at Fontenay-aux-Roses.

The experts in the CTC’s health impact unit drafted responses
to queries from the French Directorate General for Health.

Mobilisation

Understanding Fukushima fromThe Japanese reactor accident required a special organisation of IRSN’s emergency response
The 200 trained experts mobilised to address the nuclear crisis rose to the challenge thanks to the11:00 am, Friday, 11 March 2011.
IRSN assembled the members of
its emergency response centre(CTC) at Fontenay-aux-Roses as soon
as information on the impact of the 8.9magnitude earthquake that rocked
Japan at 6:46 am (Paris time), and theensuing tsunami, started to trickle in.
Although trained in emergency
response exercises, little did the CTC’s
experts know that they were embarking on a four-week marathon during
which they would relay each other 24/7.
As the crisis played out, the CTC was
staffed around the clock by no fewer
than 30 experts during the day (threeof whom also served as spokespersons)and no fewer than 20 experts during
the night. All told, the crisis mobilised
200 of IRSN’s 1,700 staff members.

A specially organised CTC...
The Fukushima disaster far exceeded

any crisis previously encountered andthe emergency response exercises regularly conducted by IRSN, the French
Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN) and
French nuclear Operators. As a result,
the CTC was reorganised to address
the specific circumstances of the crisis. The ranks of the CTC were reinforced by a group of engineers skilledin spoken and written Japanese andwho worked in rotation over thecourse of the four-week crisis. “Ordinarily, the CTC consists of a management unit, a facility assessment unit, aradiological impact unit, a media relations unit, and a secretariat and logistics unit,” explains Éric Cogez, an emergency situation and emergency
response organisation expert at IRSN
who is in charge of ensuring thesmooth operation of the CTC. “We
immediately added a General Command Post to the scheme.” A healthA support unit at the CTC
The need to assess the radiological impact of Fukushima across vast distances
rapidly became clear at the emergency response centre (CTC).
To meet this need, Damien Didier, an expert at IRSN, set up a support unit on theradiological impact of Fukushima. “The tools the CTC uses are designed for calculations
over short distances of 50 to 80 km,”he says.“As a result, we had to use researchand development tools, interface them with available meteorological data for Japan,
and build a map and film production environment.” The unit’s rapid response
made it possible to estimate, as of the first weekend, the trajectory and impactof a possible radioactive plume over Japan.

Repères I January 2012

6

impact unit and an environmental
impact unit were set up on the Monday following the quake in order to
respond to the avalanche of questions
that were rolling in.
Each unit’s teams also had to reorganise. “That Monday morning we understood that not only was this crisis goingto last, but that we were going to haveto cope with the time difference withJapan. We set up three teams thatworked in shifts to ensure they would
hold out for the duration of the crisis,”remembers Franck Bigot, an expert inpressurised water reactors and one of
the three key coordinators of the facility assessment unit.

...for a crisis unlike any other
The first concern shared by the experts
was how to collect information on an
event that was playing itself out 10,000
km away. “This was a completely new
situation,” remembers Martial Jorel,
Director of the CTC. “Until then, boiling water reactors (BWR) were relatively unknown in France. We couldn’t
contact TEPCO, the Japanese Operator, and information was coming infrom various sources and not in realtime. We followed the reactor’s condition by reading reports that were being
published on the websites of TEPCO
and NISA1 [...] in order to understandwhat was happening to the reactors andCRISIS > FRANCE

Top: the CTC’s facility assessment unit.
Bottom: the CTC’s radiological impact unit.

a distancecentre in France.
support of all staff at the Institute.
pools and find out how water was being
fed in.” In the end, the radiologicalimpact unit is perhaps the unit thatworked the most effectively and asplanned. It possessed atmosphericrelease measurements and meteorological data, and was able to calculate
deposits left by the plume as well as its
trajectories.

Synergy of skills
Despite the difficulties, the experts regularly made diagnosis and prognosisof the situation. Everyone contributed
their skills in the race against the clock.
One example is the facility assessment
team: “Each of the three key coordinators put their specific skills to work,”says Franck Bigot. “Emmanuel Raimond is an expert in the phenomenology of severe accidents such as reactor
vessel ruptures or hydrogen releases.
Karine Herviou possesses the skills
needed to draw connections with radiological impacts on populations. As forme, I was more in a position to analyse
the condition of the facility.”
But this was just the beginning: “Ourcolleagues volunteered their skills, producing diagrams of the plant for example,” remembers Martial Jorel. “Andthis effort wasn’t limited to the CTC.
Everyone at IRSN set to work.” Did
IRSN’s day-to-day operations suffer?
“We always managed to ensure thatlthough not initially part of
the CTC, the health impact
and environmental impact units
quickly proved to be vital. The
health impact unit set up basein an IRSN conference room.
“Eight full-time experts, assisted
by 16 experts working inrotation, responded to 1,300
requests received in just fourweeks from physicians andOccupational Health Physicians,the press and the general public.
They were especially busy when
the contaminated air masses
reached France,” says Alain
Rannou, the health impact unit’s
radiation safety expert. The unit
also scanned 250 people
returning from Japan(journalists, expats, airline
pilots, etc.) with a whole-bodycounter to check them forcontamination and provided 300
passive dosimeters to people
headed for Japan.
The environmental impact unit
was set up in Le Vésinet, where
the Téléray monitoring room islocated. All radiation
measurements taken by a
network of monitoring stations
throughout France are sent tothis room, and most of IRSN’s
sample processing andmetrology resources are locatedthere. This network was quickly
reinforced. Sensors were sent
to France’s overseas regions
and territories and to theAroutine assessments on the operationsof facilities in France were carried out,”says Pascal Quentin, a reactor safety
expert who replaced Martial Jorel during the first weekend and was back at
his desk the following Monday morning. “All regular reports for the advisory committees were neverthelesshanded in on time.”
IRSN also enlisted the help of partners,
such as the French national weather
service Météo-France. “We provided
IRSN with forecasts to allow it to anticipate the movements of radioactive elements and with analyses of the past7

French embassy in Japan, andactivated carbon filters were
installed to trap iodine-131, aradioisotope that is a byproduct of nuclear fission. “Wealso increased the sampling
frequency by 50%. Over a sixweek period we performed 1,200
additional analyses on lettuce,
milk and other samples that we
asked Météo-France, DGAL 1
and DGCCRF 2 employees
across France to send us,”explains Nathalie ChaptalGradoz, one of the people incharge of the unit. “IRSN’s
facilities at Cadarache andOcteville helped us to process
the extra inflow of samples” I

1. French Directorate General on Food Safety.
2. French Directorate for Competition, Consumer
Rights, and Protection Against Fraud.

Whole-body scans
were performedat the Le Vésinet site.

days’ weather conditions so that it
could retrospectively understand theobservations made,” says Jean-Marie
Carrière, director of forecasts at
Météo-France. “We also provided theconclusions of our own forecast calculations on where the plume was heading from Japan in order to combine ourresults.”
Ultimately, the crisis lasted forsix weeks, four of which required
round-the-clock vigilance. The CTC
was disbanded at 12:00 pm (Paris time)on Friday, 29 April 2011. I
1. Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency.

Repères I January 2012

Noak/Le bar FLoréal/IRSN

Photo essay: Grégoire Maisonneuve/IRSN

The health and environmental
support units

CRISIS > FRANCE

2

3

4

Photo essay: Grégoire Maisonneuve/IRSN

1

1. In the communication unit, Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, Minister of Ecology, Sustainable
Development, Transport and Housing; Éric Besson, Minister of Industry; Jacques Repussard,
Director General of IRSN; and Marie-Pierre Bigot, Director of Communication. 2. Christine
Goudedranche, website manager, and Michel Brière, Deputy Director General, in thecommunication unit. 3. Pascale Portes, Press manager, and two of her collaborators. 4. Press
conference led by IRSN spokesman.

Information activity“

IRSN keeps us
informed and we
make this information
public right away, in atransparent manner.”

Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet,
minister of Ecology, the 16 March
2011, at a hearing in the French
National Assembly.

more and more political leaders anddecision-makers.” IRSN was in fact
facing an unprecedented situation.
“With requests coming from all sides,
we implemented daily electronic bulletins, summarising our analysis of thestate of the Japanese nuclear plants
and the consequences for the population and the environment.” Nearly allof the ministerial offices requested tosubscribe. IRSN also participated,each morning, in meetings of theinterministerial emergency responsegroup, led by the Secretary of the Defence
and National Security,
service of the Prime
Minister. The Institutewas called upon by the Parliamentary
office of scientific and technologicalevaluation, which provides information to the parliament and guides its
decisions. “I was called to present thelines of defence of the reactors,” said
Martial Jorel, director of the emergency response centre.

Taking on the challengeof transparency
During the Fukushima accident, the Institute provided
accurate real-time information to local authorities,
the media, the public and civil society, mobilisingexperts and the communication unit.

I

Responding to media in
a comprehensible mannerFrance, we have lived for overof the requirements of our profession
Also in high demand, the communi“ ntwenty-fiveyears with the memhave been very helpful during thiscation unit responded to more thanory of the Chernobyl ‘lie’,” recallsMarie-Pierre Bigot, director of communication, who managed IRSN’s
Emergency Response Centre (CTC)
communication unit. Since its creation in 2002, the Institute has led an
active information policy. It goes
without saying, then, that satisfying
the information needs of the local
authorities, the media, the population
or even civil society was a must during the accident in Japan. “The nearlyten years of day-to-day work withexperts and the mutual understanding

Repères I January 2012

crisis.”Informing local authorities
Everything began according to theusual modus operandi. “We informed
the main ministerial offices by telephone, including the Ministry of Ecology and Industry and the Prime Minister,” recalls Deputy Director General
Michel Brière, who was responsible
for coordinating IRSN mobilisation
during the accident. “Considering theseriousness of the events, we very
quickly activated the CTC and notified

8

one hundred interview requests eachday, with mandatory deadlines. “TheFrench newspaper Le Monde loops at
10:30 am: they needed an expert by 9
am at the latest,” recounts Pascale
Portes, press manager. The radio stations needed regular information
flashes, and the television needed content for 1 pm and 8 pm programs.”
Three representatives were named
rapidly for different fields: facility
safety, environment and health.
Their greatest difficulty: “Providing
information in real time, while taking

CRISIS > FRANCE

Dealing with increased
website traffic
With IRSN very present in the media,
the public was quickly informed via
the website. “Starting Saturday, traffic on the irsn.fr site began increasing,” said website manager Christine
Goudedranche. “On March 23, theplume flew over France; we registered
600,000 visits in one day, compared to

Efficiency and reliabilityof information provided
Shohei Sato, director of the departmentof nuclear systems security of JNES,
the Japanese technical safety organisation.
“After the Fukushima accident, JNES collected
information from all foreign safety authorities and theirtechnical institutes, to distribute it within our organisationand transfer it to our safety authority, NISA. Of the hugeamount of gathered information, that of IRSN was remarkable in quality
and quantity. In particular, we followed the simulation of the radioactive
plume of Fukushima put online shortly after the accident. The reports on
the contamination and environmental effects on land and in the sea werealso complete and very important for us.”DR

the time to validate and place into context the elements that were coming to
us: What does this measured vesseltemperature mean?” summed up
Thierry Charles, spokesman for thefacilities department. “We were oneof the only institutes to provide somuch digested and interpreted information, which undoubtedly explains
the progressive wealth of media from
China, Japan, Korea, the UnitedStates, the United Kingdom andSwitzerland.” During this time, Olivier
Isnard, an IRSN expert dispatched toJapan, provided on-site interviews for
the French living in Japan.
In parallel, the press was monitoring
the news. “We learned about theearthquake from AFP and Reuters,
and the first information on the power
plants came to us from their dispatches,” explains Pascale Portes.
“We were a relay between the experts
and journalists, in both directions.”
Journalist Carole Laporte-Mani, scientific specialist at the French radio
station RTL, speaks of the Institute’s
contribution: “IRSN was very reactive
during the crisis, with daily press
points, available spokesmen and apress department that was able tomanage meetings while respecting
journalists’ deadlines. It became mymain point of contact. We were getting a lot of raw information, at times
contradictory, from Japan. IRSN put
it into perspective, prudently explaining why the data were reason to worry
or not. You could feel the desire of theexperts to be as accurate as possible,
to the extent of the information they
had. They did this while learning to
use language that was accurate without being too scientific. The only negative points were the difficulty ofreaching the CTC by transportation
and always having the same spokesmen. Journalists prefer to vary interviewed experts, as competent as theyare!”

IN FIGURESI OVER THE FOUR WEEKSFOLLOWING FUKUSHIMA:I G 5,000 press articles quoting IRSN G 1,365
requests for interviews G 50 electronic bul-

letins or summary of environmental monitoring of France published G 612,000 visits
and 1,500,000 pages viewed on the irsn.fr
website on 23 March 2011.
the normal 35,000 per month!” Mirror
sites for the visitors were set up to
deal with the increase in traffic. The
second technical challenge: providing public access to real-time measurements of radioactivity from sensors in mainland France and in Frenchoverseas departments and territories.
“Our database Criter was first createdfor internal purposes. Within a few
days’ time, we had to go from 2 to 20
servers, and develop a lighter versionof the software.”
The frequently asked questions (FAQ)
and electronic bulletins published on
the website made it possible for boththe press and the public to monitor
the situation with quality information.
“We know that they were even translated into Japanese,” said Marie-Pierre
Bigot, reporting on information provided by NHK radio.

Relaying information to local
information committees
For his part, Michael Petitfrère, incharge of relations with the local
information committees, informed
their presidents and leaders. “We sent
them our electronic bulletins and we

IRSN management,
serving the StateThe magnitude of the earthquake
and tsunami that struck Japan led,from day one, to the mobilisation of Frenchgovernment emergency response groups
in support of the French expatriate
community, and to the civil security effortsof the Japanese authorities.
As soon as it was clear that this catastrophe
was going to be a nuclear crisis, startingthe 12 of March, IRSN became directly
associated with this mobilisation.
The President and the Director General thus
participated in the daily meetings organisedby the Secretary General of the Presidency
and the Cabinet Director of the Prime
Minister, but also in meetings at the
emergency response center of the French
ministry of Foreign Affairs, and in meetingsof the interministerial emergency response
committee, chaired by the Secretary Generalof National Defence and Security. Therefore,
the analysis produced by the Emergency
Response Centre of the Institute were,practically in real time, passed on to
the highest authorities of the State,
to help them in decision-making processes.
identified the experts of the CTC who
could answer their questions on thepassage of air over France or the
impact of the accident on the healthof an expatriate child.” In midSeptember, a seminar was held with
ANCCLI1 to discuss issues of safety
following Fukushima, and the complementary safety assessments carried out at the French nuclear plants
in particular. I

1. Association nationale des comités et commissions locales d’information (French national association of local information committees).

9

Repères I January 2012

CRISIS > FRANCEFranco-Japanese activities tailor
How did IRSN help expatriates and companies in France and Japan get thr“The experts
re-instilled confidence
in the school community”
Michel Sauzet, principal of the Franco-Japanese high school in Tokyo.
How did you call upon
the Institute?
After the event of the 11th of March, aradiation protection expert was sent to
the French embassy. Before reopening
the establishment, it was of the utmost
importance to inform the school community about the environment inwhich the high school would be functioning on a day-to-day base. The
embassy services scheduled meetings
with the participation of local IRSN
specialists and IRSN specialists from
France to respond to the questions ofparents and staff.
What type of information
was provided to you?
In a context where information waslacking or difficult to verify, and wherecontradictory rumours were creatingstress, the experts provided a lot ofpeace of mind. As far as organisationof the establishment was concerned,
the security procedures implemented
were validated by their analysis, andmethods for accessing the premises
were defined.
How much did this reassure
the French community in Japan?
The meetings with the experts reinforced the confidence of the numerous
people following them, as did the question section (FAQ) placed online on thesites of the embassy and high school.
Even if we had to increase the number of meetings to calm the worriesof the population going to the establishment, the quality of dialogue wasalways emphasized and very appreciated by all. I

Emergency services. Accompanying a rescue
excavation mission“IRSN accompanied us before, during our rescue excavation mission and after our
return,” said lieutenant-colonel of the fire and rescue service, Bertrand Domeneghetti,
one of the leaders of the national nuclear risk management support mission, of thegeneral directorate of civil security and emergency response 1.
The French ambassador“In Japan, our dispatch group included IRSN expert Olivier
in Japan welcomes French
Isnard. Although his main mission was to help the French
rescuers at the Tokyo-Narita
embassy, he also helped the group maintain contact with
airport.
IRSN’s emergency response centre. Their forecast models
were essential to our unit. Upon return to France, themembers of the group were subject to external and internal
contamination control. The luggage was inspected as wellas the heavy equipment. The results were negative for thepeople, whereas a few objects, like gloves, parkas, shoes andtents, showed positive values of 2 to 5 times the background
dose. This return protocol created with IRSN is intended
to become a baseline for civil security.” I
1. Ministry of the Interior, Overseas Territories and Immigration.
Yoshikazu Tsuno/AFP

Repères I January 201210

Alain Savary, IRSN
expert, takes
measurements on
the works of art.

Museum. Controllingradioactivity in art

Dalí, Miró and Picasso must be
saved! At the time of the
Fukushima accident, 170 artworks
from the Centre Pompidou in Paris
were on exhibit at the National Art centre of Tokyo. The management of boththe centre and the modern art museum
are taking the necessary measures torecover the collection loaned for theexhibit. In May, curator Brigitte Léal
travelled to Japan, accompanied by
two organisers and the manager of theloans department.
“As soon as we were informed of therisk of contamination, we contacted
the IRSN emergency response centre,”recounts the curator. “We were very
worried; it was the first time we were
faced with such a situation. We didn’tknow whether the pieces were liable
to be damaged or irradiated, orwhether it was possible to handle
them without risk for the museum
staff. We were worried that upon
return the pieces would contaminate
the whole museum... Very quickly,
IRSN specialists analysed the artworks, transportation crates andexhibit halls. The results, which weredetailed in a precise report, made it
possible to reassure everyone. Today,
the pieces are back in their storage
areas or rooms at the museum. As aprecautionary measure, and especiallyto relieve any doubts, the crates weredestroyed.” I

Olivier Chabanis/IRSN

DR

Education

CRISIS > FRANCE

ough the Fukushima nuclear crisis? Testimonials.
Airline company. Reassuring aircrews“We have worked with the IRSN
emergency response centre,”
recalls Gérard Desmaris, Occupational
Health Physician for Air France andradiation protection specialist. At Le
Vésinet (Yvelines), “36 whole bodycounts 1, all negative, were carried out
for the aircrews returning from Japan.
The measurements reassured our aircrew and professional organisations.”
The company itself has transported
radiation protection material, iodine,

Téléray sensors... in Japan and in the
French overseas territories to help withenvironmental monitoring. “Our workers remain worried, about water andfood in Japan in particular,” said thedoctor with regret. “I took water fromthe Tokyo network and food samples tohave them tested by IRSN. The results
should calm the fears, but there is a lotof educating to be done.” I
1. Examination of the evaluation of received doses.

Navigation. Assessing risks

B

Louis Dreyfus Armateurs“ efore sending workers into a zone that may be contaminated, it is crucial to evaluate the situation andmake sure there is no risk,” stressed Alain Coatanhay,
fleet general manager of the Louis Dreyfus Armateurs.
When one of its ships had to repair an underwater fiber
The cable ship that
optic cable that was damaged by the earthquake 120 km
carried out the repair.
east of Fukushima, he turned to the Institute. “The information provided was essential for reassuring the team. The experts helped us topresent the radiological situation and to set up a monitoring system, including
individual dosimeters and radiation meters for the boat. One expert accompanied
the ship to the work zone. Fortunately, there was zero exposure there!” I

Media. Indicating themeasures to be takenT

wo technicians and four journalists from Radio-France were covering Fukushima in Japan. Sent
abroad to follow the story of the earthquake and tsunami, they were not protected against radiation. Marie-Pierre
Meteau, nurse, had to replace theabsent company doctor. “I called IRSN

and the Quai d’Orsay’s emergency
response centre. IRSN told us the measures to take. Upon their return, ourteams went to the Vésinet analysis laboratory (Yvelines), and the equipment
was put in storage before inspection.
As one of the recorders had alreadybeen brought back in the newsroom,
IRSN specialists went there to takemeasurements. No contamination was
detected.” I

Dosimeter supplier. Maintaining qualityT

he main supplier of radiophotoluminescent dosimeters to IRSN isJapanese. Makoto Imai, director of thecompany, explains how Chiyoda Technol, in Tokyo, managed the situation.
“As soon as the accident took place, we
described the state of our facilities andour production capacity during video-

conferences with IRSN. IRSN hadordered 30,000 dosimeters long before
the accident. As a precaution, the delivery date had been moved up. And to
avoid any risk of contamination, thedosimeters are manufactured in regions
far away from Fukushima. They are also
inspected by IRSN upon arrival.” I

11

IRSN sent Olivier Isnard, a specialist in
nuclear crisis situations, to the Frenchembassy in Tokyo. He stayed five weeks
with expatriates, French companies andalso with the ambassador Philippe Faure.
Ambassador Faure praised the work
accomplished by the expert and his commitment to French citizens. He emphasized “his pedagogical talents for explaining
the situation and the precautionary steps
to be taken” during this trying period.

Robotics

Protecting
workers
Operation in hostile environment
using a robotic cutter.

JAPC/E-Energy/Cybernétix

ed to the emergency

French Embassy
Explaining the situation
to French expatriates“There’s a big difference between performing an operation in a confined radioactive
environment on a worksite and in an open
environment liable to be contaminated andwith which we’re not familiar,” stated Olivier
Bernard, engineer and radiation protection
specialist at Cybernétix. At the moment of
the earthquake, this company, which specialises in robotics for operations performed
in a hostile environment, was participatingin the dismantling of steam generators at
the Tokai-Mura site south of Fukushima.
“From the 11th of March, we asked IRSN for
information on the situation. The difficulty
was characterising the risk, dispersion ofradioactive elements and the level of contamination. We decided to repatriate our
two workers. Upon arrival, they went toVésinet (Yvelines) for whole body counting.
The results were negative. Before sending
workers back to Japan, the Radiation Protection and Health Department of the Institute helped us to quantify the risks anddetermine the measures to take. Our workers carried dosimeters, radiation protection
suits and counters.” I

Repères I January 2012

response
G Research

G NuclearsafetyG Radiation protectionand Health
G Environmental
monitoring

Increased safety
after Fukushima
You have to imagine the unimaginable, Fukushima
has taught us. In France, evaluations are madeto validate facility compliance and calculate theirresistance to disasters. New pathways for progress
are taking shape, notably with the design andconstruction of equipment capable of withstanding
the worst stresses. Research is underway to predict
the future of radionuclides released by Fukushima,
and also to improve monitoring and radiation
protection in France.
Repères I January 201212

Sophie Brandstrom/EDF; Noak/Le bar Floréal/IRSN; Arnaud Bouissou/MEDDTL/IRSN; Laurent Vautrin/EDF; Grégoire Maisonneuve/IRSN; Toma Mark-M Way

G Emergency

LESSONS LEARNED > NUCLEAR SAFETY
Photos: Grégoire Maisonneuve/IRSN

Complementary Safety Assessments

Analysing the resistanceof French facilities
The acronym CSA refers to the Complementary Safety Assessments.
A complete inventory of French nuclear facilities that required extensive work.

T

he Three Mile Island (UnitedStates) accident and Chernobyl (Ukraine) accident
were caused by internal failures. However Fukushima
was provoked by extreme natural hazards. The latter led to an assessment of
the resistance levels against earthquakes and floods for the European
nuclear plants, and those in France inparticular. It was also necessary to
determine the lengths of time before
radioactive releases into the environment would occur in the event of total
loss of electrical supply or heat sink.
This was the subject of the complementary safety assessments (CSA)
requested from the French plant Operators by the Nuclear Safety Authority(ASN) on the 5th of May 2011.
The CSA procedure satisfies two
requests: that of Prime Minister
François Fillon from 23 March 2011,
to perform an audit of the safetyof French facilities, and that of theEuropean Council, from 24 and 25
March, to perform stress tests. “Thetwo requests were comparable,” said
Karine Herviou, IRSN expert
in charge of preparing the CSA doc-

CLOSE-UPI The assessment documentation
has eight chapters:
G 1. Site presentation;
G 2. Earthquake;
G 3. Flooding;
G 4. Extreme natural phenomena(hail, lightning, tornado);
G 5. Loss of heat sink/electrical power supply;
G 6. Severe accident management;
G 7. Service provider companies;
G 8. Summary of the site
and associated action plan.

The inspections on the operator's
premises (here the Cruas plant)
are carried out by ASN inspectors
accompanied by IRSN experts.

uments. “The French specifications
were written mainly based on the specifications written up by the European
Association of Nuclear Safety Regulators, Wenra.”

79 priority facilities
There are some differences between
the European stress tests and theFrench CSAs. They required tworeports that are different in format,
even if the content remains the same:“The scope of the French assessments
is broader. They cover not only thereactors, but also the research facilities
and fuel cycle facilities. A section dedicated to contracting has been addedat the request of the High Committee
for Transparency and Information on
Nuclear Safety,” explained Daniel Quéniart, Senior Advisor to the Director
General of IRSN, who participated in
the development of the critical analysis report of the Operator documents.

13

Nearly all of the French facilities arecovered in the CSAs. This corresponds to 58 pressurized water reactors, the EPR under construction, theresearch facilities and the fuel cycle
facilities. Seventy-nine facilities are
considered priorities by the ASN,
including the reactors that were covered in reports submitted by the Operators on the 15th of September 2011.
For the others, the facility operators
have an additional year to comply
with the request.
In practice, the different facilities toassess are numerous; however there
are only a few Operators, namely,
EDF, the French Alternative Energies
and Atomic Energy Commission(CEA), Areva and Laüe-LangevinInstitute (ILL).
In order to facilitate the CSAs, anintermediate step was observed. “In
the beginning of June, the Operators
submitted a document summarisingRepères I January 2012

LESSONS LEARNED > NUCLEAR SAFETY

the procedure they planned to use toperform the CSAs,” explains Caroline
Lavarenne, expert from the Instituteand head of CSA document preparation. “Based on an IRSN analysis ofthese documents, the Nuclear Safety
Advisory Committees – who provide
technical support to the ASN - judged
the procedures satisfactory, with certain points for caution noted. Next, theAuthority required the Operators toconsider the impact of any high-risk
facilities, such as chemical facilities,
located near a plant.”
Over the summer, the Operators of the79 priority facilities thus got down to
the task in order to submit their final
report on the 15th of September.
“Simultaneously, we at IRSN haveidentified the compliance gaps andpoints for improvement in the facilities,
calculated the periods available before
radioactive release, and re-examined
the seismic risks of each site... so as todevelop an analysis template of the
CSAs” explains Karine Herviou. A
month and a half after receiving the
Operators’ reports, IRSN was able topresent a synthesis and critical analysis of their proposals before the

Examination of the spent fueltransfer pipe at the Laüe-LangevinInstitute, Grenoble (Isère).

Nuclear Safety Advisory Committees,
which enabled the committees to state
their opinion.

The conclusions of the experts
First conclusion: if the facilities authorised in France can legitimately beconsidered safe, it is still true thatsome of them do not fully satisfy therequirements defined in the applicable safety requirements reference
state. These compliance gaps must be
quickly eliminated.
As regards the ability of the facilities towithstand scenarios beyond thoseimagined during design or re-evaluation, the conclusion of the experts is
two-fold. First, the Fukushima accident, as well as the CSAs, have highlighted certain limits of the current
safety requirements reference states.
“They do not consider the cumulative
impact of the total loss of electrical
power supply or the loss of heat sinkwith the external hazards taken into
account in the different safety requirements reference states,” explains
Caroline Lavarenne. “Furthermore,
Fukushima showed that it was possible.”Also, as the simultaneous occurrenceof events was not considered, theequipment necessary for managing
such situations is not protected and a
total loss of heat sink or electrical
power supply simultaneously affecting several facilities on one site is not

Milestones for the Complementary Safety Assessments
End of June to mid-October: inspections of the 79 facilities
carried out by ASN inspectors accompanied by IRSN experts.

11 March 2011 :nuclear disasterat Fukushima Daiichi.
23
March

French prime ministerasks the ASN 1 to carryout a safety analysis
of nuclear facilities.

5
May

1
June

6
July

Submission of a note from theOperators to the ASN, presenting
the methodology used for theevaluation, the organisation
put into place to respect thedeadlines and structure...

The ASN asks Operators(EDF, ILL, AREVA and CEA)
to carry out CSAs 2
in their nuclear facilities
deemed to be priorities.

19
July

1. French Nuclear Safety Authority. 2. Complementary Safety Assessments.

Repères I January 201215
September

ASN takes a position:
the Operators methodologies
are judged acceptable
if certain recommendations
are integrated.

Meeting and opinion of the Nuclear
Safety Advisory Committees for thereactors, facilities and laboratories:
examination of procedures proposed by
the Operators on the basis of IRSN analysis.

14

15 September to beginning of November:preparation of documentation by IRSN.

4
November

IRSN’s expert report returnedto the ASN and membersof the Nuclear Safety Advisory
Committees.

ASN received the Operators CSAs
reports with their conclusions andevaluations . The ASN commissions
IRSN to review the 79 files.

8, 9 et 10
November

17
Nov

Publicationof the IRSN
report.

Meeting with the Nuclear Safety
Advisory Committees for opinions onreactors, facilities and laboratories: analysisof the CSA reports of the Operators basedon IRSN review.

LESSONS LEARNED > NUCLEAR SAFETY

View fromthe field

READ IT ONLINE
I Transparency at all levels
The Nuclear Safety Authority and IRSN desired
the greatest possible transparency on the complementary safety assessments. Several documents of the assessment process can be consulted online:n addition to the complementary
safety assessments (CSAs),
inspections of the sites covered by the CSAs in 2011 were ledby the French Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN). They were
performed between June and November of 2011, around topics
related to the Fukushima accident: protection against external
hazards (earthquakes and flooding in particular), loss of electrical
power supply, loss of heat sink and operational management ofemergency situations. The goal of these 38 inspections lasting an
average of three days, to which the IRSN experts were assigned:
to control the compliance of equipment and organisation of theplant operator in terms of existing safety requirements reference
states. Before these inspections, IRSN has drawn up a support
guide, a sort of common template for the inspections to be
carried out. “Participating in these visits with the ASN provided
us with a vision of the field,” said Karine Herviou, IRSN expert
in charge of preparing the CSA documentation. “For example,
it allowed us to observe that the systems for protection against
flooding were not always completely deployed.” I

I

On the IRSN website(www.irsn.fr/en/):• The 500 pages assessment report submitted by IRSN on 4 November 2011 following the review of the Operators CSAs reports(in French)• A summary of this report (in English).
On the ASN website(www.french-nuclear-safety.fr):• The Operators CSAs reports (in French)• The Conclusions of the Nuclear Safety Advisory Committees, based on the IRSN report(in French)• The ASN report on the CSAs published in
January 2012 (in English).

earthquakes or floods. They will form
the “hardened safety core”. Today,
each facility must have a minimum of
two sets of vital equipment that are
extremely robust and available in all
circumstances, to prevent a severe
accident or to control the consequences. “If we only prevent, wealways risk forgetting something andhelplessly watching a release like
Fukushima take place,” said EmmanuelRaimond, project manager for analysis of severe accidents. “Systems forcontrolling a possible accident mustalso be designed.” Karine Herviou
summarises this in one expression:“belt and suspenders”. The robustnessof the means for emergency responsemust also be enhanced for these situations.

considered. “Certain equipments, suchas pumps or depressurization and filtration devices, are common to twounits. There is mobile emergency
equipment on the sites, but they areintended for one reactor or one facility only,” explained Karine Herviou.
Final conclusion: the need to reinforce
or put into place equipment for the
management of extreme situations
that is capable of withstanding large

3
InJanuary 2012 January

Issues already known

ASN prescriptions
addressed to the Operators
for the implementationof requested modifications.

Report of the ASN
on the CSAs submitted
to the Prime Minister.

Hervé Bouilly/IRSN - Source IRSN

ember

Certain conclusions of the CSAs match
longstanding works, for the reactors
for example. “The flood that occurredin 1999 at the nuclear power plant inBlayais had already raised the questionof combined climate hazards. Protection against flooding had been reinforced,” recalls Martial Jorel, reactor
safety specialist at IRSN. “After the accident at Three Mile Island, the French
nuclear plants were equipped with sandfilters to depressurize the chamber inthe event of severe accident, as well as

15

ASN-IRSN
inspection of
the coolingwater pumpstation at theCruas plant(Ardèche).

hydrogen recombiners. Following thethird wave of ten-year inspections in
2003, a decision was taken to reinforce
the bolts in the containment building,and to equip reactors with a system fordetecting a vessel break and a system
for measuring hydrogen in the containment.” Precious improvements, thatwould certainly have played a role ifthey had existed at the Fukushimaplant, although most probably still
incomplete due to the fact that theycannot necessarily withstand extreme
hazards. “The sand filters cannot withstand earthquakes,” Martial Jorel noted.
An analysis shared by Thierry Charles,
his colleague in charge of safety in laboratories and plants. “Like the reactors,
the fuel cycle facilities are subject toperiodic safety re-examinations where
everything is reviewed from the pointof view of the latest data and knowledge. For example, the facility of company FBFC, which produces uraniumbased fuel, had benefited from several
reinforcements between 2003 and 2008,
related to earthquake behaviour in particular: reinforcement of buildings andconfinement with implementation of asecond leaktight barrier around theUF6 1 cylinders, fire protection, etc…”

Scheduled for 2012
After the CSAs, the conclusions of the
Nuclear Safety Advisory CommitteesRepères I January 2012

LESSONS LEARNED > NUCLEAR SAFETY

and the decisions taken by the ASN in
the beginning of 2012, each facility
operator will propose a practical, precise and concrete definition of theequipment to be put into place. An
implementation schedule, taking into
account the particular sensitivity ofcertain sites, should also be proposed.
“The facility operators have made anumber of commitments in their documents that they must implement
today,” recalls Daniel Quéniart.
Caroline Lavarenne adds: “The CSAs
are only the first step of a long processof lessons learned following
Fukushima. In France they are going
to lead to a reinforcement of the capacity of the facilities to maintain their fundamental safety functions when facedwith hazards that are clearly greaterthan those retained during theirdesign.”What about the European stress tests?
At the end of 2011, France, like eachof the member States, submitted a
final report on the complementary
safety assessments of their facilities
to ENSREG (European Nuclear Safety
Regulators Group, who coordinates

Helping local information committees
in critical analysis
The local information committees, which are the embodiment of the public's right of review
and right to information, have requested to monitor the preparation of the complementary
safety assessments (CSAs). They have asked IRSN to support them in this task. “On the 14thof September 2011, we brought together 80 people in Paris, especially the members of thelocal information committees and associations, to scrutinize the CSAs with them and to givethem basic and methodical elements,” explained Ludivine Gilli, in charge of the openness tosociety at IRSN. Four experts came to explain seismic and flood hazard, loss of heat sink, lossof electrical power supply and management of accident situations. Although all the subjects
got a reaction, the loss of heat sink and power supply generated a lot of questions, as did
seismic hazards.
One month later, the submission of the Institute’s summary report led to another meeting
between the IRSN and the local information committees, where they discussed theconclusions offered on the 24th of November. “All these meetings lead definitely to
an increase in know-how and technical skills of these commissions and offer the Institutean outside view of its efforts. They help to identify emerging technical questions, contributing
to IRSN considerations both in research and expertise.”

this project for the European Council
and prepares European decisions) andthe European Commission. This version is slightly different in format, but
its content is identical to the French
report. “This report will be subject toa peer review during the first half of2012,” Daniel Quéniart specified. All
this is within the scope of moving
toward a common nuclear safety
approach. I
1. Uranium hexafluoride.

Learning lessons from events related
to nuclear safety
making it possible to lower pressure while limiting
releases of radioactive particles. With the use ofsuch filters, in combination with containmentbuildings of even a bigger size, caesium releases
would have been 10,000 to 100,000 times lower at
Fukushima.”

Three Mile Island (United States). In 1979,
the Three Mile Island accident showed that a core
meltdown was possible. Procedures for managing
the final situations, the total loss of heat sink orelectrical power supply in particular, were added.
Emergency response was developed. A new
approach was defined ("state-oriented" operatingprocedures), based on the real state of the facility
rather than on supposed scenarios. “This accident
was the starting point for a research programmethat now provides for the anticipation andestablishment of measures,” adds EmmanuelRaimond, project manager for analysis of severe
accidents at IRSN. “Today, the French PWR's areequipped with hydrogen recombiners that limit thepossibility of explosion like Fukushima, andcontainment building venting and filtration systems,

Repères I January 2012

Adélaïde Maisonabe - CNPE du Blayais

Following
Following thethe storm
storm ofof 1999,
1999, thethe heightheight ofof thethe dike
dike at
at thethe Blayais
Blayais facility
facilitywaswas increased
increased fromfrom 5.20
5.20 mm toto 8.50
8.50 m.
m.

Chernobyl (Ukraine). In 1986, in addition to
the decommissioning of RBMK reactors (except in
Russia), the main lessons learned were related tothe management of nuclear risk in Europe, thenecessity of transparency and large-scale
management of contaminated areas.

16

Blayais (Gironde). During the storm of 1999, a
combination of high tides, depression and swells
generated waves flooding the facility site andrendered several safeguard systems inoperable.
This led to a re-inforcement in site protection
against flooding. A list of strategic equipments has
been defined, which, using dikes or leaktight walls,
should remain out of the water. This is the
beginning of an approach leading toward the reinforcement of facility defence in-depth against
environmental hazards.

LESSONS LEARNED > NUCLEAR SAFETY

Stress test

Close-up of the Gravelines
nuclear power plant
Preparing a complementary safety assessment report means days of work.
Testimonials from a unique summer in the North of France.

Gravelines (North), summer 2011.
While tourists are visiting thecity redesigned by Vauban andtrying their luck at water sports, time
is not spent on leisure for the workers
at the nuclear power plant, the largest
site in Europe with 6 900-MWe reactors. As for the 18 other EDF sites, all
are mobilised for the preparation of
the complementary safety assessments(CSA) report. More than 300 engineersfrom the EDF group are participating.
“Since the end of March, EDF has created a project team at central department level, bringing together engineering and production, and associatingother EDF areas, such as R&D,”
recounts Philippe Renoux, head of production.

Heat sink is one of the subjects addressedin the facility complementary safetyassessments.

Centralised preparation
The main part of the preparation of the
CSA reports is thus centralised. “Anational engineering team has been put
into place, with as many managers as
there are subjects: earthquakes, floods,
loss of heat sink...” said Laurent Payen,project leader resonsable for the engineering part of the stress test. Only thesections on the particularities of theplant were prepared by the field manager. This division of work was proposed in June by EDF, assessed for amonth by IRSN and validated by the
French Nuclear Safety Authority(ASN). “There are 58 reactors, but there
are only four different types of themaccording to power output.1 Whereas
the general layout drawings of the facilities are part of EDF engineering andproduction services, the detailed drawings are the responsibility of the facilities. IRSN field teams check the compliance of the facilities”, summarized
Pascal Quentin, in charge of the assessments of the French pressurised water
reactor (PWRs).

“We have inspected compliance point
by point,” confirms Denis Barras, who
led the operation in Gravelines. The
task quickly proved time-consuming.
“For example, as the site is locatedalong the sea, it is more exposed toflood hazard. It had to be confirmed thatin the event of a rising in waters, theequipment necessary for resupplying
the facility with water would not be
under water, which requires inspectionof the walls and the leaktightness of
openings (passageways, cables, pipes)...
Just the inspection of the fire valves was
assigned to two people for four days
for the inspections, preparation andphotographs of the reports and theinspection of the editor's work by a second person.” Occasional inspections
were organised with the national
teams to check that the emergency
equipment satisfied earthquake
requirements.

17

For Denis Barras, the CSA file represented more than 1,500 hours of work.
“It took up all of my days from June to
September and the same for five engineers from my team. ASN inspections
also had to be managed, while managing the day-to-day, and in particular the
analysis of the third ten-yearly outage...”Simultaneous visits
Following Fukushima, the site had to
manage consecutive ASN inspections.
“That's six days of inspection between
the end of June and mid-October. Eachcovering one of the retained subjects:
earthquake, flood, heat sink, electricalsupply, emergency situations and service providers,” enumerated François
Godin, who checks the Gravelines site
for the ASN. “Also participating weremembers of the local information committee, members of the National Committee for Transparency and Informa-

Repères I January 2012

LESSONS LEARNED > NUCLEAR SAFETY
The Gravelines nuclear power plant is the largest
site in Europe, with 6,900-MWe reactors.

Laurent Mayeux/EDF

Close-up of facilition on Security and inspectors fromthe Belgian nuclear safety authority
within the framework of long-standing
exchanges. IRSN was present at the six
inspections at Gravelines, with one or
two experts. These experts were either
specialists in one of the areas addressedor managers of the Gravelines site at
the Institute.”
One ASN pilot inspector was preparing the visit with an ASN copilot andexperts from the Institute. “IRSN specialists participated in the preparationof visits. They contributed to the development of a common guide for all
inspections, which is then applied bytaking into account the specifics of eachsite”, explains Karine Herviou, one of
the IRSN experts preparing the CSA
documentation. “This support represented more than ten days of work.”
On the field and in the meeting room,
everything was carefully screened.
“We were asked to implement theequipment to be used in case of an accident,” recounts Denis Barras. “Wetherefore, with the inspectors present,
tripped the alarms linked to the seismic
sensors.”

What next?
What are the conclusions drawn fromthese inspections? “We confirm that thelevel of safety is good at all facilities,”
answers Philippe Renoux. “But we areconstantly working to improve it,” headded. Concerning Gravelines, several
points were addressed in a follow-up
letter requiring a reply from the Operator within two months. “Wedemanded certain urgent repairs,
mainly of the filters in the reactor cooling system, of which the supports were
corroded by seawater and of which certain anchors were missing,” noted
François Godin. “We asked the Operator to review the diesel motor fuelRepères I January 2012quality test procedure, as well as backup
power supply, which seems insufficient
to use. For flooding, the everyday
checking that the hatches and doors areclosed seemed not to comply with theapplicable procedures.” Laurent Payen
added: “Gravelines being surrounded
by a dense industrial base, we are working on a convention with these companies to limit the storage of dangerous
products in the vicinity of the power
plant, and the implementation of analert protocol in the event of a problem...”
In parallel, the CSA report was presented to the local information committee of Gravelines, on the 11th ofOctober. Members were able to pose
their questions to EDF. Based on the
responses obtained and the information received during the technicalmeetings simultaneously organised by
IRSN, the local information committee
reformulated the questions. They werethen sent to the ASN for inclusion in
the final report in December.
The Gravelines report and those of theother priority sites contribute to thenational analysis performed by IRSN
in September and October. The IRSN
analysis mainly served as a base for theconclusions presented at the beginningof November by the ASN's Nuclear
Safety Advisory Committees. Based on
their conclusions, on the record ofinspections and on the comments fromthe local information committees, inthe end of December, the ASN prepared a French report for submission
to the Prime Minister. A second reporthaving a different format but identicalcontent was drawn up for Europe. It
was a tight schedule, but it was
respected. I
1. Specifically: 34 PWR reactors of 900 MWe,
20 of 1,300 MWe, 4 of 1,450 MWe and 1 EPR
reactor under construction, of 1,600 MWe.

18

The Operators of the power reactors
reactors, and fuel cycle facilities (enriassembly manufacturing and repro
submitted their complementary safetyassessment report on the 15th of Se
2011. In all, 79 facilities are con
priorities in France. The Operators
24 other facilities will need to submit
report on the 15th of September
at the latest.

Priority facilities
2011 2012
Power
reactorPower reactor
undergoing dismantling
Research
reactors
Basic nuclear
installations

Risk of flood
Earthquake risk
Very slight Slight Moderate Medium

The European fleetof Nuclear Power Plants
The fleet includes 144 operational power
plants in Europe and 6 under construction,in 14 member States. France is ranked first,
with 59 reactors, including one under constructionin Flamanville (Manche).
France59
United Kingdom

19Germany

17

SSourceourc
ourcee N
Nuclearucleear Po
Powerer Reactors
Reacttors in th
the World IAEA (31/12/2009)

LESSONS LEARNED > NUCLEAR SAFETY

ties
researchchment,cessing)

Gravelines

6

LILLE

ptembersideredof the
their
2012

2
7

Chooz

4

La Hague

Penly

3

Flamanville

2

1

Paluel4
Cattenom

ROUEN
CAEN

METZ

1
BREST

3

PARIS

2

SaclayBrennilis

STRASBOURG
Nogent-sur-Seine

1

2

RENNES

4

3

NANTESORLÉANS

22

Fessenheim

4Dampierre-en-BurlySaint-Laurentdes-Eaux

Belleville-sur-Loire

TOURS

DIJON

2

Chinon2
Civaux

1
Bugey

2

CLERMONT-FERRAND

2
4

LYON

Creys-Malville

1Saint-AlbanBlayaisGrenoble

1 Romans

1
BORDEAUX

Hervé Bouilly/IRSN - Source IRSN

4

4 Cruas-Meysse
4

52Tricastin
Marcoule

Golfech

1

1

1

3

7

1

Cadarache

TOULOUSEMARSEILLE

Sweden
Spain

10

8

Belgium

7

Czech
Republic

6

Romania
Finland Hungary Slovakia
Slovenia
Bulgaria
Netherlands

4

4

4

2

2

1

19

1

Repères I January 2012

LESSONS LEARNED > RADIOLOGICAL IMPACT

Radiological impact on the Japanese population

Initial evaluation map

Toma Mark-M Way

28 days after the Fukushima accident, the IRSN became the first institute to publish a map
showing the radiological impact on the Japanese population living in the Fukushima area.

A Japanese resident measures the levelof radioactivity in produce from his orchard.

7

0,000 Japanese people, living as
far as 80 km from the nuclear
power plant, are likely to receive
doses exceeding 10 millisieverts (mSv)
during the first year following the accident. This was the result of an evaluation carried out by IRSN experts in
April 2011. These figures raised thealarm, four weeks after the accident.
“Based on aerial measurements

obtained by the USA and the IRSN’s
simulation of radioactive releases, wehave drawn up a map of the doses that
the Japanese population would be likely
to receive in the year following the accident through external exposure to theradiation emitted by the contamination
deposited on the ground,” said
François Queinnec, then the coordinator of the unit dedicated to radiological consequences at the emergency
response centre. The experts looked inparticular at a 20 x 70 km strip of contamination located north-west of
Fukushima, beyond the evacuation
zone. “Between 20 and 35 km on thisnorth-west line, the doses reached 100
to 500 mSv per year.”

Reacting quickly
to provide protection
The IRSN experts then cross-referenced this map with the population
distribution data for the area. “Our calculations suggested that 2,200 inhabitants could receive an annual external

dose exceeding 100 mSv, 3,100 could
receive doses between 50 and 100 mSv,
21,100 could receive doses from 16 to
50 mSv, 43,000 could receive doses
from 10 to 16 mSv, and 292,000 could
receive doses from 5 to 10 mSv,” adds
François Queinnec.
“Twenty-eight days after the disaster,
IRSN was the first institute in the world
to publish a map showing that the dosimetric impact on the non-evacuatedpopulation could be significant.
Ten days later, an American estimate 1
confirmed the French results. This was
swiftly followed by a Japanese evaluation 2 that obtained results that were 2
to 2.5 times higher, but broadly consistent with the French and American
results.” Since then, gradual evacuation measures have been applied,which will reduce the calculated potential impact. I
1. Conducted by the American Departmentof Energy.
2. Conducted by the Japanese Ministryof Education, Culture, Sport, Science,
and Technology.

Symbiose software

Monitoring environmental releasesW

hat happens to the radionuclides emitted by a nuclear
facility? Symbiose, a tool
used to model the transfer of radionuclides into the environment, provides
quantified answers to support the field
investigations. “It simulates what happens to radionuclides in the mediumthat constitute a continental environment: agricultural land, rivers, inhabited areas, etc.,” summarises MarcAndré Gonze, Project Manager andEngineer at the IRSN environmental
modeling laboratory. “This applies tonormal or accidental operating conditions, or during the dismantling offacilities.”

In the first few days following the accident, this laboratory collected and processed data characterising the
Fukushima region to feed the models:land use, agricultural production, foodrations, contamination of drinking
water, etc. “Starting from an estimateof the source term and the atmosphericdeposits, our simulations have allowed
an initial evaluation of the changes overa four-month period of the expectedcontamination levels in soil and agricultural produce in a radius of 80 km.
Although the activity levels predicted
by Symbiosis had been overestimated,the decay kinetics turned out to be fairly
realistic.” In late April, the maps ofradioactive caesium deposits published jointly by the USA1 and Japan 2
made it possible to “refine our predictions and gain a more realistic pictureof the levels of caesium contaminationand their spatial variability.”
The IRSN’s current aim is to analyse
all the information it receives concerning the state of contamination of themedia and to embark on the qualification and consolidation of the constituent models of Symbiose. I
wwwTo find out more: www.irsn.fr,
menus: Research > Scientific tools >Computer code > Symbiose code

1. American Department of Energy. 2. Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sport, Science, and Technology.

Repères I January 201220

Téléray network

Three questions for...

Working towards
improved environmental monitoring

Didier Champion
Head of the collective work
conducted at IRSN concerning
crisis management in the eventof a nuclear accident or incident
in or affecting France.

More radiation monitors, more modern
equipment: modernising of the Téléray
network was underway since 2007.
Fukushima has given it fresh impetus.

What were the main lessons in crisis
management that Fukushima taught us?
Before Fukushima, the studies concerned scenarios on amoderate scale and the releases over the course of one
day. Fukushima showed us a more complex dimension,
with releases over several days and deposits starting on
16th March affecting the food chain and the habitat. There
was a concertina effect between the managing of the emergency, with its evacuation measures, the question ofwhether or not to distribute stable iodine, etc., and the startof post-accident management across more extensive territories. The accident had an unprecedented impact on themarine environment, highlighting the gaps in our crisis
expertise. Providing calculations concerning the dispersion of the pollution in the sea is not sufficient to enable
the right decisions to be made. We need to be able to predict what we are likely to observe, when and where, sothat we can take preventive action. We need to know whichmarine species will be the worst affected, and whether
swimming can be allowed.

T

he renovation of the Téléray environmental radioactivity monitoring network began in 2007. “We plan
to renovate everything,” explains Guillaume Manificat, head of monitoring networks at the Institute: “theprobes, signal transmission, data supervision, in other words
the management of alarms and repairs, and their siting,whether this involves the 160 existing probes or any additional ones.” The radioactivity in the air is thus monitored
in real time all over France in order to detect any irregularities or accidents. There was also a plan to provide finer
monitoring by covering the territory with at least one beacon per department, and as many as 16 beacons aroundpower plants, at a radius of 10 to 20 km and 20 to 30 km.

A perfect partnership
The ideal candidate: the roof of gendarme stations, whichhave a mast and a transmission network to which theprobes can be connected. “Discussions were already underway, and Fukushima accelerated them, because beacons had
to be installed before the contaminated air masses arrived
over the Antilles. It was a perfect partnership: a meeting on
Tuesday morning, the go-ahead given at 3 PM, and seven
operational probes overseas by the following Monday!” An
agreement is currently being drawn up for the installationof 260 probes on gendarme stations. These sites will supplement the 160 existing ones, which will be given new beacons. Even so, with the deposits from Fukushima extending well beyond the 30 km zone, further reinforcement of
the network is already being envisaged: “Fukushima has
confirmed our decision to add probes from 10 to 30 km frompower plants, but it raises the question of whether we mightneed another circle of beacons at 50 km.” This would mean
200 more beacons. I

What about protecting the population?
Fukushima will also lead us to review the emergency protection doctrine. The current rules are fairly rigid: distribution of stable iodine and sheltering within 10 km, evacuation within 5 km. Experience shows, however, that
although this 10 km radius is still the priority action zone,
we must be prepared to go beyond that, both in space andin time, because the releases can be long-lasting. Supplementary elements must be added to the doctrine with thisin mind, and more flexibility must be allowed in the protection strategy.

Arnaud Bouissou/MEDDTL/IRSN

A new-generation
Téléray beacon installedon the roof of Navy
headquarters in Paris.

Will Fukushima also have an impact on the Institute?
The IRSN has acted as an expert for many bodies in addition to the Nuclear Safety Authority, of which it is the technical support arm. When a nuclear crisis arises, national
government authorities, as well as local authorities under
the responsibility of Prefects, call upon the Institute. Thismeans that we must review our position in the national
crisis organisation. Internally, we must change our mobilisation rules and stop applying an all-or-nothing system:
we need to allow for intermediate levels of mobilisation of
our crisis organisation, with the possibility of mobilising
teams without necessarily activating the emergency
response centre. Finally, experience has also shown thatIRSN must be recognised as an actor that contributes infull measure to informing the public in real time.

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Repères I January 2012

Noak/Le bar Floréal/IRSN> CRISIS MANAGEMENTLESSONS LEARNED > RESEARCH

Areas of scientific research

The Fukushima crisis highlights
Scientists did not wait for the Japanese disaster to occur before working on nuclear accident
a large number of tools were used to manage the crisis. But certain lines of research were
his is not a revolution,” insists
Bernard Chaumont, whohelps to coordinate researchat the Institute. He has been given
responsibility for a working groupdedicated to post-Fukushima R & D.
“The crisis did not give rise to new
topics or reveal any lines of research

Operational tools
for a fast response
Grégory Caplin, an engineer specialising in
criticality research and analysis at IRSN,
received questions from the Institute's emergency response centre concerning the riskof a criticality accident in Fukushima at thetime of the crisis.
“Measurements and observations werereaching us from the contaminated area inJapan. We had to establish whether or not
such an accident had occurred. We had adevelopment version of Vesta, a softwarethat simulates the state of the irradiated
fuel. It is flexible enough to model a boilingwater reactor. We were also helped by athesis project in progress concerning inverse
calculation algorithms for our Prométhée
software. We normally examine a given situation and look for its consequences, but inthis case, we had to take the consequencesof the accident as the starting point. Thanks
to this work, we were able to assert that
there was no evidence to confirm a criticality accident at Fukushima. I see this not justas a combination of circumstances, but as
the result of forward-looking research using
high-performance and operational instruments. Our responses were fast thanks to
our computing resources and our habitof conducting research almost
like an expert analysis.”DR

Grégory Caplin, criticality
research and analysis
specialist engineer
at IRSN.

Repères I January 2012

we hadn’t already thought of.” But theinitial feedback from Fukushima reinforces certain safety and radiation
protection needs.

Prevention and damage
limitation in facilities
The first issue identified by IRSN concerns the facilities themselves. The
aim is to better prevent accidents and,to do this, to better characterise natural events (earthquake, flood, etc.).
When these are given greater consideration, particularly in probabilistic
safety analysis, the weak points offacilities can be identified. This will
require collaboration with otherresearch bodies, and certain underlying problems will need to beanswered: “We will need to work out,for example, how to allow for rare
events, such as an earthquake thatexceeds all the predictions,” says
Véronique Rouyer, Head of Programmes at IRSN. “Should they beconsidered sufficiently rare, and therefore so unlikely that they should not
be given priority, or should we takethe opposite approach by allocating a
research budget to them in view of
their potential consequences?”
Fukushima also showed that prevention is not enough; it is preferable tocontrol severe accidents in the eventthat they occur. “The phenomenologyof accidents like these is well known
now,” adds Bernard Chaumont. “Therelevance of much previous researchhas been shown. For example, during
the Japanese crisis, the release of fission products was estimated, in particular thanks to the work carried out
for the Phébus programme 1. How far
did the decay of the reactor coreprogress? What about breaches in thevessels?”
The second strengthened line ofresearch: protection of persons andthe environment, because the acci-

22

IRSN

T

“

Astec software simulation of a core
meltdown accident in a pressurizedwater reactor.

dent confirmed the realistic natureof accident scenarios leading to significant releases. “The crisis haschanged the priority of certain linesof research,” Bernard Chaumont confirms. “Certain topics have become
more urgent, such as studies on
the health effects of low doses, andthe effects of contamination on theenvironment–particularly the marine
environment.”

Radiation protection
around facilities
The scope of the work is turning out
to be very broad: to gain a better
understanding of the effects of ionizing radiation on the scale of a cell, aliving organism, or a population; tobe able to map contamination zones
quickly so that populations can bebetter protected from radioactive fallout; to improve the individual
dosimetry methods for personnel
working on an accident site; and tostrengthen the platform for the evaluation of the dispersion of radionuclides in the food chain. “We have

LESSONS LEARNED > RESEARCH

the avenues to be explored
prevention. On the contrary,bolstered by these events.
found some discrepancies between
the territorial contamination predictions made by IRSN and the in-situ
measurements, suggesting that thesepredictive models need to be
improved,” acknowledges Véronique
Rouyer. She then adds: “Fukushima
has confirmed the need to open ourselves up more to the social sciencesat different levels: this could be at thelevel of a facility, to better understandthe role of human factors, for example in terms of decision-making before
or after the accident, or, outside theboundaries of the power plant, work
concerning the resilience of society.”I
1. The Phébus PF severe accident programmeis to help reduce the uncertainty concerning
the estimation of radioactive products in theevent of a core meltdown accident ina pressurized water reactor, and to increase
the IRSN’s analysis and crisis management
expertise in this field.

Anticipating release in the eventof uncovery in spent fuel pools“Before it can be transported, spent fuel must
be cooled for several years in pools,” reminds
Philippe March, head of an experimental laboratory focused on fuel cladding at IRSN.
“Although the vulnerability of irradiated fuel inreactor pools was demonstrated by Fukushima,
the issue has long been a subject of research at
IRSN. The Mozart programme, which determined the oxidation rates of cladding in air
and the runaway limits of this reaction, hasmade it possible to estimate the time available before cladding ruptures and releases ofradioactive substances. Nonetheless, Fukushima means that we will have to specify the runaway conditions in order to determine thesetime margins more accurately and adapt the
response measures where necessary. Over the
coming years we are going to work on thestrength of fuel cladding in an atmosphere thatis closer to real conditions and evaluate whether
this cladding retains its confinement properties

after being uncovered then covered again withwater.”
When asked what other tool was useful during
the crisis, Olivia Coindreau, a researcher incharge of modelling at IRSN, replied: “ASTEC[Accident Source Term Evaluation Code], which
is used to determine the amount of radionuclides released into the environment during asevere accident.” A special pool version of
ASTEC, containing forthcoming results of experimental investigations on the behaviour of
cladding, is expected to be developed. “Had thepools emptied during the crisis, the current
reactor version of ASTEC could have been used
to quickly calculate the time periods prior to significant releases. Fortunately, that scenario
apparently did not occur. Still, it sent a strong
message that work on the issue of accidents
involving irradiated fuel in pools must be continued.”ierre-Yves Bard is a seismologist in chargeof the Flash Japan call for projects, launched on
17th June by the French National Research Agency(ANR) and the JST 1. “This procedure, known as Flash,responds to exceptional events to collect data as soon
as possible and learn as much from it as we can.”It is the second one of its kind; it was first triggered
following the earthquake in Haiti.
There was barely a month between the call for
projects and the submission of proposals to the ANR.
The nine chosen projects were launched in
September. This pace was not too fast for an IRSN
project led by Christelle Adam-Guillermin, aradioecology and ecotoxicology biologist. This
project, known as Free Bird, studies the effectsof ionising radiation on birds (barn swallows,
tree sparrows and greenfinch in China) exposedin the area affected by the accident at Fukushima.
“These species were chosen because of their different
lifestyles and the characteristics of their plumage.

P

Experiments in the radioecology
and ecotoxicology laboratory.

The more colourful birds could be more sensitive toradiation if the anti-oxidant carotenoids that pigment
their feathers are used to counteract the oxidative
stress due to radiation. The aim is to evaluate
the impact on living organisms of chronic exposure
to ionising radiation. Based on laboratory studies,
we were able to estimate an acceptable dose rate
below which no harmful effects on fauna and flora
are anticipated. For birds, this value may be exceededby one or two orders of magnitude in the zone within
a 100 km radius of the Fukushima site. In particular,
the Free Bird project will test the robustness of
this radiation protection criterion.”
1. Japan Science and Technology Agency.

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Noak/Le bar Floréal/IRSN

Emergency launchof research projects

28/02/12

19:15

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