Safety Q&As
22 Jul 2011
Leave no bolt unchecked: Laurent Patisson, ITER Nuclear Building Section Leader, provides explanations to Jacques Ducau (IRSN) as Pierre Perdiguier (Head of the Marseille division of ASN), Mathias Ricci (ENGAGE) and Christophe Gary (APAVE) look on.
How does the ITER Organization make sure that the tasks performed by its partners and contractors meet the safety requirements of a nuclear installation? What procedures does the Organization implement in this regard? Are these procedures robust enough? How does the ITER Organization monitor the manufacturing of the safety-critical components destined for the machine?
Answers to these questions and others are essential to assessing the global safety of the future ITER nuclear installation.
Last Wednesday, ITER staff members Joëlle Elbez-Uzan, Lina Rodriguez and Laurent Patisson and Thomas Tardif from the European Domestic Agency spent some ten hours providing a team of inspectors from the French Nuclear Safety Authority (Autorité de Sûreté Nucléaire, ASN) with the explanations they requested.
As it does with every nuclear installation on French soil, the ASN will inspect ITER on a regular basis. In accordance with the ITER Agreement, ASN can conduct up to ten inspections per year, both "scheduled" and "unscheduled."
Wednesday's inspection, which consisted mainly of presentations and discussions, also included a long afternoon visit to the depths of the Tokamak Seismic Isolation Pit—a rare occasion, for everyone present, to experience the true scale of the project.