Mr. Dominique Vignon

Mr. Dominique Vignon,Civil engineer by education, Dominique Vignon also graduated in Law and in Economics.

He worked for EDF, the French electricity utility for ten years, in charge of design and construction of nuclear power plants, in France and abroad.

In 1991, he joined the Framatome group (the French nuclear vendor), to lead the basic design of the EPR project. He became President and CEO of Framatome until 2001. Under his leadership, Framatome successfully delivered the Nuclear island of the Daya Bay and Ling Ao projects.

He is a former member of the INSAG Group, directly advising the IAEA General Director on safety issues. He is an active member of the National Academy of Technologies of France, and of the World Nuclear Academy.

Abstract:The report that forms the basis of this presentation is jointly released by the Chinese Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Technologies of France and the French Academy of sciences. Responding to societal concerns about the environmental consequences of human and industrial activities, it focuses primarily on the environmental impacts of nuclear energy in normal and accidental situations, including waste management and aims at providing a comprehensive analysis of these issues. The major issues considered in this presentation are those raised by Severe nuclear accidents and their impact on the environment, and those related to the Improvement of nuclear safety as a way to limit environmental impacts and to contribute to public acceptance of nuclear energy. Severe accidents have marked the history of nuclear energy development. These accidents have had a large impact on the environment and have reduced public confidence in nuclear energy. However, the return of experience has led to major improvements in many aspects, including reactor design and operational management as well as in the development of severe accident management guidelines, and this has proved to be highly valuable. The environmental risks in the event of a severe accident that might occur in the future have been substantially reduced. Lessons learnt from the three main severe accidents have served to improve nuclear reactor designs, to considerably reduce the probability of occurrence of the release of radioactivity, and to make sure that the consequences to the environment remain limited locally so that, if one such accident with radioactive material releases does occur, these releases would be minimized and large scale evacuations of people would not be required. The report underlines the importance of safety management with respect to environmental protection and recommends that further efforts be pursued to improve reactor safety and the transparency of the industry and authorities supporting and controlling nuclear power.