CSN Supervision and control. Inspections

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Supervision and control. Inspections

Supervisión y control. Inspecciones

The functioning of nuclear facilities is supervised and controlled through various mechanisms. The most direct one is based on inspections by the Spanish Nuclear Safety Council (CSN), more than 100 per year, designed to check compliance with the specific nuclear safety and radiological protection requirements.

The inspections provide the necessary information for checking compliance with the relevant legislation currently in force, the Council’s instructions and the specific conditions imposed in the regulatory authorisations, licences or permits. The inspection is carried out by a qualified person, officially accredited by the CSN for this. The results of the inspections are included in a single document called the Inspection Record.

The CSN has a resident inspector in each nuclear power plant to monitor daily activity in nuclear power plants and to supervise compliance with the Official Operating Documents.

In the case of the functioning nuclear power plants, the Integrated Nuclear Power Plant Supervision System (SISC) is applied. The SISC includes the inspections in the Base Inspection Programme (BIP) which are systematic control inspections.  There are also additional or supplementary inspections triggered by findings encountered in the previous ones, which are the occasional control inspections.

There are equivalent integrated supervision systems which are applied to other nuclear facilities but adapted to their specific characteristics, as is the case of Juzbado and El Cabril, which also have their own IBPs.

The biannual IBP inspections cover aspects such as design modifications, component design bases, compliance with monitoring requirements, operating experience, protection against severe weather conditions and floods, fire protection, final heat sink, personnel training, in-service inspection, maintenance management, environmental radiation monitoring programmes, waste management, reloads planning, radiological monitoring of workers, radiological protection instrumentation, emergency preparedness and response, inspections related to the physical protection of the facility, etc.

The monitoring of reportable events that occur in nuclear power plants through the Incidents Review Panel (IRP) also forms part of the supervision and control process carried out by the CSN, as does the monitoring of the operating experience and the review of periodic reports sent by the licensees as base documents for preparing the inspections to comply with the conditions set out in their authorisations.

The CSN also supervises the conditions in which nuclear substances are transported as well as the fuel casks themselves used for the transport and individualized temporary storage of nuclear materials.

For further information on the supervision and control of radioactive installations, service entities and other activities, please visit the section Radiation protection > Supervision and control. Inspections.