ASN's Scientific Committee
ASN's Scientific Committee held its first meeting on 8 July 2010.
The Scientific Committee was created by resolution 2010-DL-0012 of 27 May 2010 and its main activity is examining and giving an opinion on research to be conducted or amplified in the fields of nuclear safety and radiation protection.
The high standard of the decisions made by ASN relies particularly on robust technical expertise. This expertise has to rely in turn on the best knowledge available at the time.
Consequently ASN, like its main foreign counterparts, is concerned about the availability of the knowledge necessary for expertise to be provided in five, ten or twenty years' time.
It is therefore important that it identifies the research areas that will contribute to acquiring this knowledge. This demands that ASN maintain relationships with those involved in research into nuclear safety and radiation protection on the one hand, and with its foreign counterparts on the other.
The creation of a Scientific Committee for ASN is a central part of the implementation of this policy, and the more so because ASN is not a research body itself and does not wish to be involved in putting together programmes or running them.
Finally, ASN wants to ensure that the needs identified are taken into account when the orientations of research into nuclear safety and radiation protection are defined by IRSN, operators, other French research bodies (universities, industry), and in European and international projects.