The double control and its consistency with the double contingency principle

G. Kyriazidi (1) , P. Rippert (1)

1 CEA-DES (ex-DEN) - CEA-Direction des Energies (ex-Direction de l'Energie Nucléaire)

The double contingency principle is implemented in French nuclear research and development facilities. Regarding nuclear criticality safety in the CEA's Cadarache centre, the double control principle was initiated in the LECA-STAR facility in the early 2000's and generalized to the other (approx. 20) nuclear installations since then. This paper presents the operational experience gathered from the beginning until now. Some simple statistics are used to illustrate the reliability of the double control principle as applied in the CEA/Cadarache facilities. The significant events registered at the ASN (Autorité de Sûreté Nucléaire – Nuclear Safety Authority) are analysed to demonstrate that defence in depth prevails and the failures that have occurred were detected and corrected by appropriate measures

Keywords: Double contingency principle; control; hot lab

Domains: Nuclear Experiment [nucl-ex]; Nuclear Theory [nucl-th]

G. Kyriazidi, P. Rippert. The double control and its consistency with the double contingency principle. ICNC 2019 - 11th International conference on Nuclear Criticality Safety, Sep 2019, PARIS, France. ⟨cea-02614128⟩