Parliamentarians validated, on Wednesday, the candidacy of Pierre-Marie Abadie for the direction of the Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN), at the center of a controversial reorganization project, the Senate announced. Pierre-Marie Abadie, current director general of the National Agency for Radioactive Waste Management (ANDRA), obtained a total of 44 votes in favor of his appointment and 17 votes against in both chambers, the National Assembly and the Senate, according to a count transmitted by the services of the upper house of Parliament, also counting 25 blank votes.
The name of the current director of Andra was proposed in May by the Elysée to preside over the Nuclear Safety Authority, then the future Nuclear Safety and Radiological Protection Authority (ASNR), the sole authority that will replace the ASN from January 1 2025. should replace Bernard Doroszczuk as president of the ASN, whose non-renewable term ends on November 12. Next, it will have to face the last phases of the process of creating the ASNR, on January 1, the result of the controversial merger between the ASN, the nuclear power plant police, and the IRSN, an expert institute in the sector, both born in principles of the 2000s lessons from the Chernobyl accident.
Linked to the Cigeo nuclear waste burial project
The creation in January 2025 of the ASNR, decided in the Elysée, was approved in Parliament at the beginning of April after a parliamentary battle and strong opposition from both unions and associations, concerned about public information and the separation between experience and decision. The law, which aims to “speed up” decisions to reactivate nuclear energy, was promulgated on May 22. Speaking on September 24, the current president of the ASN, Bernard Doroszczuk, indicated however that the timetable for the entry into force of the new organization was “tense.”
Before the National Assembly and then in the Senate, Pierre-Marie Abadie defended the principle and schedule of reorganization of nuclear security governance and dismissed any accusation of conflict of interest due to his current duties at Andra. At the head of Andra since October 2014, his mission was, in particular, to carry out Cigeo, a project to deeply bury the most radioactive waste of the French nuclear fleet. This contested project is being tested and researched in an underground laboratory in Bure on the Meuse. Its formal request for creation authorization was submitted in January 2023 to the ASN, which must carry out a long investigation phase that will last several years.
Source: BFM TV