In line with ETSON´s goals and with respect to their responsibility in maintaining and furthering nuclear safety, ETSON´s members commit themselves to a set of basic values:

Independence

To ensure and prove its independence the expertise body shall not undertake work likely to compromise its neutrality or likely to lead it to assess its own work. Particularly, persons conducting independent assessment should not have participated in the work being assessed. The expertise body shall have rules enabling it to steer clear and/or suspend any assessment or expertise subject to internal or external commercial, financial or other pressures or influences, liable to call the quality of its work into question. The responsibilities of the personnel involved in the assessment or who may influence the assessment shall be precisely defined in order to prevent any conflicts of interest.

Transparency

In applying the Aarhus Convention, ETSON members shall inform the public on nuclear risks and publish the nuclear safety assessments in respect with industrial privacy. ETSON members shall inform the corresponding safety authorities when they work with a designer or operator.

In performing assessment and/or related expertise activities, traceability is a requirement. Consequently, the expertise body shall identify the intermediate and final products of the assessment and their status by suitable means throughout the conducting of the assessment.

These elements as well as the results of the evaluations and of any necessary actions arising from the evaluation shall be recorded and maintained for an appropriate period in compliance with legal and regulatory obligations.

Impartiality

ETSON safety assessment practices must be independent from the identity, nature and nationality of the client organisation.

The expert’s competence and personal qualities contribute considerably to the quality and the reliability of the assessment and of its result. Depending on his/her role for an assessment and on the type of expertise body, the expert’s competence includes technical competency in the expertise subject areas as well as managing a team of experts and drawing up an assessment report. Moreover, the expert shall be trustworthy, fair, sincere, honest, discrete, open-minded, while remaining critical and independent. He/she shall be capable of understanding, observing, analysing, discerning, persevering and taking different opinions and points of view into consideration.

Proactiveness

ETSON members shall use their technical knowledge in order to answer to the requirements on nuclear safety assessment and to foresee the forthcoming needs in this field.

Initiative

ETSON members have a duty to alert their client when a risk in nuclear safety is seen in the framework of their activities.