EDF warned to improve reactor maintenance

France’s nuclear safety authority, the Autorité de Sureté Nucléaire, warned EDF, the country’s monopoly operator of atomic power plants, in March 2011 that it needed to improve the maintenance of its reactors.

The French government had ordered the ASN to lead a reactor-by-reactor study on safety at the plants, in addition to carrying out stress tests of the reactors as part of a European Union initiative launched as a result of the Japanese accident in early March 2011. Findings would be published by the end of 2011.

Website: Autorité de Sureté Nucléaire / French Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN) http://www.french-nuclear-safety.fr/

ESO: Background information: Building hiatus eroded expertise http://www.europeansources.info/record/building-hiatus-eroded-expertise/

World Nuclear Association: Country Briefings: Nuclear Power in France http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf40.html

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