Abstract:
Periodic Safety Review (PSR) is a key issue in the life of a BNI. Indeed, PSR is an efficient means to improve the safety level of an installation and to take a decision for the continuation of the reactor operation towards the next decade. Based on the French practice and experience, the objective of this paper is to give an overview of the PSR management for Research Reactors (RR) from a TSO point of view.
After a presentation of the new French regulatory context, the expectations/requirements of the Nuclear Safety Authority and the Institute for Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN) are given.
All the organization and contents of PSR, from the submission by the operator of the main options report until the implementation of hardware modifications and the update of reference documents, are described; however, the paper mainly focus on the two basic parts of PSR, which are the conformity check, and the safety reassessment.
Then, based on the latest PSR conduct on French RR and analysed by IRSN, the paper emphasizes the main conclusions.