Having acted as a licensed agency for inspection and safety review of nuclear installations for more than 30 years, AVN has accumulated a large experience covering all aspects of safety assessment of the full life of various nuclear installations, namely: nuclear power plants, research reactors, fuel processing plants, isotope producing installations, facilities for medical and industrial use of ionising radiation and waste management.

The expertise of AVN relies on an in-depth knowledge
and experience in different fields:

Safety management

• Management of regulatory organisations
• Assessment of safety management systems
• Start up and commissioning of nuclear plants
• Organization, personnel training, operations, maintenance, quality assurance, technical support
• Operational, incidental and accidental procedures (including severe accident management)
• Risk assessment

Operational Experience Feedback

• Analysis of incidents in nuclear installations
• Database on foreign selected events and recurring events reports (ARIANE)
• Probabilistic analysis of safety relevance of incidents
• Performance indicators
• Human and organizational factors

Radiological Safety Management

• Radiation protection (including assessment of measurement of low activities and of characterization of waste)
• Emergency preparedness (national level, onsite level)

Project and Quality System management

• Design and implementation of safety related Quality Assurance systems
• Safety related Project Management

Systems

• Systems analysis e.g. hydraulic systems, electric power supplies, instrumentation and control - including safety related software - , protection against internal and external hazards (fire, explosion, flooding, etc.), environmental and seismic qualification
• Mechanical systems, structures and components
• Pressurised systems design verification
• Assessment of accident analyses using various methodologies (thermal hydraulics and reactivity transients)

Reactor core and fuel safety performance

• Neutron physics and reactor core reload analyses (including mixed cores)
• Use of mixed oxide fuel (MOX)
• Spent fuel : storage capacity, dry and wet storage

Decommissioning

• Assessment of decommissioning activities (decontamination and decommissioning of hot cells, of buildings having contained radioactive material, of research reactors)
• Operational documents

Radioactive waste management

• Safety aspects of waste treatment and installations conditionning
• Safety aspects of waste storage and disposal