On 3 January, the French nuclear safety authority, the ASN (Autorité de Sûreté Nucléaire), presented its safety review of French nuclear facilities to the French Prime Minister. Through its president, André-Claude Lacoste, the ASN recommends "increasing the robustness of the facilities to extreme conditions, beyond their existing safety margins."

As far as the ILL is concerned, the recommendations made in our own report have been approved. The ASN stresses the high quality of the work carried out by the ILL and the depth of the studies undertaken and of the proposed plan of work.
The report states that “the ILL has sought to deploy, in a thorough manner, a full safety margin assessment approach”. The ASN has taken note of our commitments to implement improvements in line with the post-Fukushima Complementary Safety Assessments and of our proposed work schedule; it asks that the timing of certain work items be brought forward, wherever possible.

 
On 5 January, a meeting took place between the ASN and the nuclear operators at the Ministry for Ecology, Sustainable Development, Transport and Housing. This provided the ILL with an opportunity to highlight, in the presence of the minister, Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, the satisfactory progress we have made to date with our project, as approved by the IRSN and the ASN, and the fact that work would begin as early as this year.