The CEA, the French National Authority for Nuclear Research, has recently made public its statistics on the accidents that occurred in its plants for the period 2003-2005.

The results related to CEA employees are encouraging. Accidents leading to absenteeism have decreased by 8% and accidents without absenteeism decreased by 20%.

Information supplied by the CEA is more negative for “outside workers” who work for companies that supply CEA plants with services. In this case, the number of accidents has risen by 5%.

“We didn’t reach our objectives with subcontractors”, acknowledged Hervé Bernard, the person in charge of risk management at the CEA.

• More information on the situation of "outside workers" in the nuclear industry is available from the latest issue of HESA Newsletter