The law 2000-108 of 10 February 2000 regarding the modernisation and development of the public electricity service considerably modifies the domestic electricity market in France. Whilst stipulating EDF's public service commitments, the law, which transposes a European directive on the internal electricity market, in particular places EDF in competition for the production and supply of energy to the main customers.

EDF underwent a change of status in 2004, becoming a limited company. At the end of 2005, the company was floated, with the State retaining an 86% stake. The law stipulates that the State must keep at least 70% of the equity and voting rights.

Cost control concerns are now more clearly apparent in the licensee's dialogue with the ASN. Technical discussions with EDF have clearly become tougher with regard to economic feasibility aspects, or to the justification for certain requests or certain deadlines, and in the handling of very short-term subjects during unit outages.

A broader discussion has begun and is continuing on the potential safety impact of electricity market trends and the new practices implemented or foreseen by the licensee, and on the actions that could be taken by the ASN in this field. The ASN has already initiated work in several areas.

The first area of work is to develop monitoring tools to provide early warning of any drift: the economic situation, spending trends, workforce management and licensee organisational changes are all the subject of closer scrutiny. The ASN has thus questioned EDF about its 2005 budget and asked for a periodic safety and radiation protection summary of certain steps taken to improve the economic performance of the nuclear power plants, such as cycle extensions, or reliability centred maintenance. Spending trends show regular investment in maintaining the nuclear power plants and a more or less constant R&D effort over the period 2002-2005. Overall, the 2005 review showed no worrying drift. However in the future, the ASN will be keeping a close watch on the consequences of any reorganisation within EDF designed to attain its economic performance targets.

The second area of work is to set up a more open and responsible dialogue with the licensee about economic issues. One instrument used in this dialogue is the system of analyses offsetting the cost against the safety benefits, so that for a given financial resource level the actions offering the highest safety gains can be chosen. At the end of 2004, EDF presented these analyses to the ASN to provide a ranking of the modifications currently being defined as part of the periodic safety review for the third ten-yearly outages on the 900 MWe reactors.

The third area of work is to set up a clearer, stronger legal framework. The nuclear safety and transparency bill proposes making improvements to these aspects. Deciding to act immediately, the ASN set up a system of decisions and formal notices and began drafting a number of general technical regulations.

The fourth area of work is to develop international exchanges between nuclear safety authorities, in order to move towards harmonised requirements in the light of licensee internationalisation and the arrival of a competitive, interconnected electricity market. The work done within the WENRA association, in which the ASN plays an active role, contributes to this.

In this context, the Director General of the ASN, in a letter dated 20 September 2005 (available on the www.asn.gouv.fr website), drew the attention of EDF's Chairman to the changes experienced by the nuclear industry in Europe and their short and medium term repercussions with respect to nuclear safety and radiation protection, in particular:

• the growing importance of the international dimension in nuclear safety issues and safety harmonisation work;
• the need for a broader view of safety, including radiation protection and environmental protection concerns, technical aspects, but also human and organisational factors;
• in the context of an increasingly competitive electricity market, the need to preserve the goal of constantly improving safety.