Link to the study - European Parliament - Europa

Nuclear Decommissioning: Management of Costs and Risks
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Regulation of decommissioning funds
The regulator organisation ASN's opinion is that it is essential that the funds required for
decommissioning nuclear installations and managing radioactive waste be both sufficient and
available when needed.
Further, the national regulation in France demands dismantling cost estimates to be conservative.
The reserves for dismantling and decontamination - technical decommissioning in the narrower
sense - of a nuclear facility has to be fully collected already at the start of its operation. As this
legislation was newly introduced, EDF was granted a transition period until 2010 to build up those
funds (WICEE 2007). The securing of financing of nuclear costs is regulated in Article 20 of TSN 2006.
The securing of financing of nuclear costs is regulated in Article 20 of Programme Act 2006-739 of 28
June 2006. This article is clarified by decree no. 2007-243 of 23 February 2007 and the order of 21
March 2007 (ASN 2008).
According to this, operators must submit a report every three years containing a cost assessment
and describing calculation methods and choices made concerning assets and their
management; they must also submit an annual update to the report and immediately inform the
authority of any significant event in this area.
A national committee is set up to assess the funding of basic nuclear installation
decommissioning and spent fuel and radioactive waste management. It also verifies that
provisions are made to cover future costs and that assets are properly managed for this purpose.
The committee must submit a report to Parliament and to HCTISN, the French high committee
for transparency and information on nuclear safety. EDF has to submit an assessment, describing
the calculation methods and making choices concerning assets and their management; and to
annually update this report. EDF has to immediately inform the authority of any significant event
in this area.
EDF’s control system for decommissioning
EDF developed a controlling system which utilizes work progress and finance progress indicators for
its decommissioning projects.
The work progress indicator is calculated and updated on a quarterly basis. The measurement of the
work progress indicator is based on the fulfillment of representative tasks within each subproject (the
lowest hierarchy level of the project) and according to the milestones. The passed milestones are
recorded and compared with the programme reference - forecasted physical progress is compared
with the realized physical progress. The work progress indicator is then compared with the project
financial progress ratio.
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