ABSTRACT
General safety is the keystone of French social and political consensus about the use of nuclear power. According to the directors of France’s nuclear installations, general safety is the central principle for determining how nuclear energy production and plant maintenance are organized and managed. However, the safety authorities (DSIN) and the parliamentary committee (Office Parlementaire d’Evaluation des Choix Scientifiques et Technologiques), that both surveys safety and radiation protection in France, have been expressing growing concern about the frequency of “incidents” in basic nuclear facilities and increasing instances of malfunction in radiation protection (see the committee’s annual reports for the 1990s). The fact is that safety and radiation protection are directly influenced by how maintenance work is organized.
