1. General approach to laboratory and plant safety

Nuclear laboratories and plants present a wide range of risks, depending on the type of radioelements, processes and reagents used.

So, apart from criticality risks when uranium is enriched to more than one percent of the isotope 235, upstream cycle facilities using uranium in hexafluoride form essentially entail chemical risks associated with the reagents used and the uranium processed (chemical toxicity due to the element uranium and the by-products of uranium hexafluoride decomposition in the event of a leak).

Plants manufacturing uranium-based fuels present risks mainly from criticality and the dissemination of uranium-bearing materials, the latter being more significant and associated with greater risks of exposure to personnel when using re-enriched reprocessed uranium.

Finally, plants using plutonium and spent...