Each year the French Authority for Nuclear Safety and Radiation Protection (ASNR) establishes the list of Basic Nuclear Installations (BNIs). A BNI is an installation which, by its nature or because of the quantity or activity of the radioactive substances it contains, is subject to a specific regulation and oversight system defined by the Environment Code (Title IX of Book V). These installations must be authorised by Decree further to a public inquiry and the opinion of ASNR. Their design, construction, operation and decommissioning are regulated. As at 31 December 2025, the number of BNIs (in the sense of legal entities) stood at 118. The following are BNIs: 1. nuclear reactors; 2. large installations for the preparation, enrichment, fabrication, treatment or storage of nuclear fuels, or for the treatment, storage or disposal of radioactive waste; 3. large installations containing radioactive or fissile substances; 4. large particle accelerators; 5. deep geological repositories for radioactive waste. With the exception of nuclear reactors and any future deep geological repositories for radioactive waste, which are all BNIs, Section 1 titled “Classification of Basic Nuclear Installations” of Chapter III of Title IX of Book V of the regulatory section of the Environment Code sets the BNI System thresholds for entry into the BNI System for each category. For technical or legal reasons, the BNI concept can cover different physical realities: thus, in a Nuclear Power Plant (NPP), each reactor may be considered to be a specific BNI, or a given BNI may be made up of two reactors. Similarly, a “fuel cycle” plant or a centre of the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) may be made up of several BNIs. These different configurations do not change the conditions of oversight in any way. The following come under the BNI System: • installations under construction, if they have formed the subject of a Creation Authorisation Decree (DAC); • installations in operation; • installations that are shut down or undergoing decommissioning, until they are delicensed by an ASNR resolution. The missing BNI numbers correspond to installations delicensed (see chapter 12 of the full ASNR Report) or licensed as new BNIs (for example, further to the merging of of BNIs 178, 179 and 180 into a single BNI named “Atrium” – 178-U). These former BNIs, which no longer exist, are therefore removed from the following list, along with their numbers. To ensure the oversight of all the civil nuclear activities and installations in France, ASNR has a regional organisation comprising eleven regional divisions based in Bordeaux, Caen, Châlons-enChampagne, Dijon, Lille, Lyon, Marseille, Nantes, Orléans, Paris and Strasbourg. The Caen and Orléans divisions are responsible for the oversight of the BNIs in the Bretagne (Brittany) and Île-deFrance regions respectively. Overview of basic nuclear installations as at 31 December 2025 100 ABSTRACTS – ASNR Report on the state of nuclear safety and radiation protection in France in 2025
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