Pierre-Marie Abadie, familiar with energy issues, has been asked by the government to head the future nuclear safety body, which he will first have to organize at the end of a bitter reform.
President of the Republic Emmanuel Macron plans to appoint Pierre-Marie Abadie at the proposal of the Prime Minister, the Elysee Palace said on Monday.
The current director general of the National Agency for Radioactive Waste Management (Andra), Pierre-Marie Abadie, will initially lead the current Directorate of Nuclear Safety (ASN) and will also be responsible for the mission to create a prototype for the future Directorate of Nuclear Safety and Radiation Protection. (ASNR), a single body that will replace and lead the ASN from its inception on January 1, 2025.
The President of the National Assembly and the President of the Senate have been informed of this draft nomination, and the decision must be made by the concerned committees of the two chambers, the Presidency of the Republic said. Pierre-Marie Abadie, if appointed, will replace Bernard Doroschuk as ASN president, whose non-renewable mandate expires on November 12.
Contested merger
Until then, his task will be to lead efforts to prepare the future of ASNR, which emerged from the controversial merger of ASN, the nuclear power plant policeman, and IRSN, the industry’s expert institute, born in the early 2000s. lessons from the Chernobyl disaster. For this mission he will be “placed with Bernard Doroshchuk,” ASN was assured on Monday.
The creation of the ASNR in January 2025, decided at the Elysee Palace, was approved by Parliament in early April, after more than a year of protests by trade unions, as well as experts and associations. The law, which aims to “simplify” decisions to restart nuclear power, was unveiled on May 22.
Although the reorganization remains to be defined in future internal regulations, the inter-union CGT-CFDT-CFE CGC IRSN demanded the “rapid appointment” of a “prefigurator” sufficiently “neutral” to “resolve differences existing on several issues.” between IRSN and ASN.”
Former employee of the Ministries of Environment and Defense.
House rules must, in particular, establish “conditions of distinction” between agents responsible for assessing files and those responsible for making the final decision, the law specifies, a distinction considered important for security by experts on the subject.
“During the legislative work on the merger of ASN and IRSN, I committed myself to ensuring the swift appointment of the predecessor. Following the promulgation of the law last week, it culminated in the appointment of Pierre-Marie Abadie,” Industry Minister Roland Lescure said on Monday.
Having headed Andru since October 2014, Pierre-Marie Abadie’s mission was to lead Cigeo, a project to deep-dispose of the most radioactive waste from the French nuclear fleet.
This contested project is being tested and researched in an underground laboratory in Bure on the Meuse. A formal request for permission to establish was submitted in January 2023 to ASN, which faces a lengthy investigation phase over several years.
François Geoffroy, a spokesman for the CFDT, expressed his “lack of understanding” about this apparent “conflict of interest” to inter-union IRSN on Monday. On the other hand, “it is positive that a predecessor can be appointed who does not come from ASN and who has not been involved in this reform so far.” We hope that this will allow us to begin our work in an atmosphere of listening,” he added.
Chief mining engineer Pierre-Marie Abadie previously worked for seven years as director of energy at the Directorate General of Energy and Climate (DGEC) of the Ministry of Environment. His career also took him to the Ministry of Defense, where he was an industrial adviser, and to the General Directorate of the Treasury.
Source: Le Parisien
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