The Legislator decided in 2006 to endow the Agency with a clear frame­work (executive) for intervention on contaminated sites.

Law number 2006-739 of 28 June 2006 (ANDRA, 2006) relating to the sustainable management of radioactive materials and waste specifies the public service missions of ANDRA by setting three objectives:

• Determining and publicizing the national inventory of radioactive mate­rials and waste.

• Management of certain wastes from the general public, in particular when the public, totally foreign to any use of radioactivity, become holders of radioactive objects (by inheritance, for example) sometimes unaware of the radioactive nature of the objects which they hold (e. g., radium objects),

• The remediation of former radioactively contaminated (orphan) sites and the management of the waste generated.

The law included the principle of a State subsidy contributing to financing the missions of general interest entrusted to the Agency.

The financing mechanisms described above in Section 15.4.1 is replaced by an annual public subsidy securing stable financing of the operations and thus allowing the programming of multi-annual intervention according to the site prioritization. The public subsidy also allows total financing of the works, and makes the situation of certain private individuals easier (e. g., when they cannot finance, or only in part, the rehabilitation works to their property).

The public subsidy also allows financing of storage of polluted soils at the remediation sites and the storage of radium-bearing objects that require, in the absence of a definitive solution (disposal of LL-LLW — see Section 15.2.2), to be stored on dedicated sites (located on the CEA sites in Saclay and Cadarache). Of course, in parallel, ANDRA strives to minimize the volume of polluted soils coming from remediation sites.

To manage this work on remediation, a new department was created in ANDRA in January 2007 (within the Industrial Direction). Its role is to lead and coordinate the Agency’s work on the remediation mission. Delib­erations on the decision-making structure for the use of the State subsidy was the object of extensive work from 2006 to the beginning of 2007 with participants from the Ministry of Industry and from the Safety Authority. This work resulted in the creation of a National Commission for assistance in the Radioactive Area (CNAR) which expresses an opinion on the use of this public subsidy, on the allocation priorities for the funds, on the strate­gies of treatment of the polluted sites and on the questions of doctrine regarding the waste.

The functioning of this committee is similar to that of other structures with similar missions in the governmental sphere (such as those for envi­ronmental remediation). The CNAR, chaired by the Chief Executive Officer of ANDRA, includes representatives of the authorities (Safety Authority, the appropriate ministries, technical public institutions such as the French Technical Support Organization (‘Institut de Radiprotection et de Shrete Nucleaire’, or IRSN), NGOs: two environmental protection associations, elected representatives) and two qualified persons (a representative of a public institution and a specialist in remediation).

The CNAR was created by deliberation of ANDRA’s Board of Directors in April 2007. It met twice in July and September 2007 and immediately began to discuss operational issues.

In 2012, the structure remains active, unchanged, and is handling the remediation mission.