AERB to study French nuclear accident

India’s Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) would conduct a comprehensive study on the accident in a nuclear waste recycling plant in southern France which killed one man and injured four others.

At the Centre for Treatment and Conditioning of Low-level Radioactive Waste, or Centraco, in Codolet, an oven dedicated to melt low radioactive metallic waste exploded inside the building on Monday. The radioactivity was contained inside the building. AERB would also look anew at safety measures on nuclear waste disposal and treatment facilities at nuclear power plants.

R Bhattacharya, AERB’s non member secretary, told Business Standard, “AERB will certainly take a close look at the incident which took at place at Centraco. As far as disposal and treatment of nuclear waste and nuclear medical waste in India are concerned, AERB has already issued guidelines.”

After the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan earlier this year, it had come out with a slew of suggestions on upgradation of safety applications at Indian nuclear plants.

Officials said AERB and the French nuclear safety regulatory authority, Autorité de Sûreté Nucléaire (ASN), would share inputs on the recent accident. Both have an agreement for exchange of technical information and cooperation in the regulation of nuclear safety and radiation protection. The deal came into force in 1999 and was renewed in 2005 and 2010.

Nuclear Power Corporation (NPC) chairman and managing director S K Jain said, “We do not melt any metallic component at waste management plants of nuclear plants. Our facility is a small one to take care of low- and very low-level radioactive waste or contaminated waste.” NPC operates 20 plants of 4,760 Mw cumulative capacity.

ASN said, “The accident at the nuclear facility in Centraco is over. The explosion of a furnace used to melt radioactive metallic waste caused a fire that was mastered at 1 pm. The building concerned has not been damaged. The wounded are not contaminated and measurements made outside of the building by the operator and by the public firefighter specialist unit showed no contamination. The accident entails no radiological challenge nor protective action for the local population.”

The French authority said it had suspended its crisis organisation and was in contact with the prefecture of Gard and the operator, Socodei. It would carry out inspections to analyse the causes.