How iDeals supports ANDRA on a public declaration and other major projects

Converting scientific expertise into practice to protect future and present generations

ANDRA is France’s national agency responsible for the safe management of all radioactive waste in the country. Their overarching responsibility is to safeguard the present and future generations from the hazards of nuclear waste; as such, they maintain France’s national inventory of radioactive waste.

In 2018, after vetting several providers, the agency started using iDeals Virtual Data room to work on the declaration of public utility for the Cigeo project – the deep geological disposal facility for high-level and intermediate-level long-lived waste to be built. 

Three years on, ANDRA continues to use the platform to manage 14 active projects, with more than 380 users collaborating on it. As Hervé Bienvenu, ANDRA’s Head of Document Management Department affirms “iDeals is very evolved technically in terms of problem-solving, document availability, and security management.”

The context

The French National Radioactive Waste Management Agency ANDRA is a public scientific agency placed under the supervision of the Ministries for Energy, Research, and the Environment in charge of long-term radioactive waste management on the French territory. 

With the launch of the declaration of public utility, they rightly anticipated more people wanting to access relevant information from the project and knew they needed sophisticated technology that they could trust.

Key challenges

The subject matter was of high strategic importance, and the agency needed to have absolute control over what happened to its data. Another key aspect was that many of their documents were dynamic, so they also wanted significant storage capacity with the flexibility to expand quickly.

When planning new projects or designing new methodologies, the agency and experts, such as producers of waste, government authorities, and legal professionals’ activities needs were many, including: 

• Communicating with a range of third-party experts during consultations.
• Sharing very heavy and long documents.
• Receiving and discussing technical, financial, and legal information.

After looking at several VDR providers and having completed a month’s trial with iDeals, the team found iDeals VDR really easy to use and had also been most impressed with the great support provided.

Solution

Using iDeals, the agency is able to:

• Safely share hundreds of documents that could be thousands of pages long while controlling both access and copying.
• Share different files efficiently with a range of third-party experts. 
• Allow only watermarked copies to be downloaded.
• Count on a dedicated project manager and unlimited training sessions.
• Expand their project as and when they needed.
• Rely on a billing system that met the requirements imposed on public agencies.

The future

Three years later, the agency continues to use iDeals for their major projects.

In all ANDRA’s dealings with iDeals “The most important thing is the many different levels of security offered…We use all the security levels because they are really extensive,” concluded Hervé.