The mathematician and former deputy recalled on franceinfo that a 2014 report by the Court of Auditors, on which the government relied, had qualified the project as “an error”.
The reform for the merger of IRSN and ASN, “it’s really trying to hit the wall”, denounced Monday March 13 on franceinfo Cédric Villani, while the nuclear bill is examined in the National Assembly. The government added the reform of nuclear safety by a simple amendment, adopted by the deputies in committee, which aims to integrate the IRSN (Institute for Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety), the technical expert, into the ASN ( Nuclear Safety Authority), the power plant policeman.
According to the mathematician and former MP, “we have a reform that is made in the hussar”. For the former president of the Parliamentary Office for the Evaluation of Scientific and Technological Choices, “in the front row to see all the functioning of the institutions of this nuclear safety”the government is getting ready, “against the advice of those concerned”, “to operate the greatest upheaval in nuclear safety in all of our history”.
A reform “made in the hussar”
According to him, the dissolution of the IRSN would mean the disappearance “of a system put in place, with a preliminary report, with a law, with provisions ratified and programmed and ensured for fifteen years, since 1998”while “nothing is ready”.
“You have 1,700 people, engineers, scientists, who would suddenly be attached to the Nuclear Safety Authority, which today only has 400.”
Cédric Villani, mathematician and ex-MPon franceinfo
However, scientific advisory bodies, research orientation committees, ethics and professional conduct committees, “all the management bodies have come out against this merger”he insists, “which is done by forced march and against the staff”. This merger could lead to all kinds of problems, according to Cédric Villani: “Problems of separation between expertise and decision-making, the sharing of roles between safety and security and problems on the status of personnel such as the status of doctoral students or even on authorizations.”
“It would have taken years of preparation”
According to international rules such as those of the IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Agency, “it would have taken years of preparation for this and it’s all done in the blink of an eye, without knowing on the basis of what report, without knowing on what evaluation”. The government relies in particular on a report by the Court of Auditors in 2014. “But in this same report from the Court of Auditors, it was said that it would be a mistake to merge”concludes Cédric Villani.