| Radiation protection | At a power plant, ionising radiation sources are numerous: the fuel itself, equipment activated by neutron flux (particularly that which is close to the core, such as tanks or lids) and particles from corrosion of the primary circuit of reactors and carried by the primary fluid. The level of exposure of a person is quantified by the dose equivalent in Sieverts (Sv). The total dose equivalents, called “collective dosimetry” and expressed in man-sieverts, is used as an indicator of dose received by all participating persons. The mobilisation of stakeholders has allowed a continuous improvement of performance on the protection of employees against the effects of ionising radiation. |
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| Distribution network | Downstream of the transmission network, medium- and low-voltage distribution networks serve end-users (residential, local authorities, SMEs, SMIs, etc.). |
| Transmission network | Network providing for the transmission of electrical power at High and Very High Voltages from the generating sites to the distribution networks or industrial sites directly connected to it; this includes the major interconnection transmission network (400,000 volts and 225,000 volts) and the regional distribution networks (225,000 volts, 150,000 volts, 90,000 volts and 63,000 volts). |
| Entity Responsible for Balance | Entities with which RTE signs a contract for the financing of shortfalls between forecast and actual consumption and production of a portfolio of users brought together by the entity responsible for balance which plays a role of insurer covering the potential losses arising from the many differences between over- and under-supply. |
| Reprocessing | Reactor burnt fuel reprocessing aimed at separating materials that can be recycled (uranium and plutonium) from final waste. |
| Systems services | Systems services are services provided to users (consumers or electricity producers) through the joint action of the electricity transmission network operator RTE and the producers. They are intended to regulate frequency and voltage in order to maintain the balance between electric consumption and generation at all times. They are created by RTE from elementary contributions from producers, i.e. primary and secondary reserves provided to RTE. RTE remunerates the producers for these auxiliary services before reinvoicing these services via the tariff to use the network under the rules defined by the Union for the Coordination of Transmission of Electricity (UCTE). |
| Smart city | The smart city is a new urban development concept aiming at improving the quality of life of city dwellers by making the city more adaptive and efficient, using new technologies based on an object and service ecosystem. The scope of this new way of managing cities includes: public infrastructure (buildings, street furniture, home automation, etc.), networks (water, electricity, gas, telecoms); transport (public transport, intelligent roads and cars, carpooling, so-called soft mobility – by bike, on foot, etc.); e-services and e-administrations. |
| Smart charging | Smart charging is an umbrella term for all technologies aimed at optimising the charging or discharging of an electric vehicle through efficient, flexible and economical management of the vehicle’s recharging power. |
| STEP | Pumped-storage hydropower plant. Power plant with two tanks, an upper and a lower one, connected by pumps that allow the water to be pumped up once turbined and located in the lower tank, towards the upper tank. |
| Storage | Storage consists in placing packages of radioactive waste in a facility, ensuring their long-term management, i.e., under safe conditions allowing for long-term risk control. |
| Nuclear safety | Nuclear safety includes all of the technical, organisational and human measures which are intended to prevent accident risks and to limit the effects of an accident, and which are taken at every stage of the nuclear power plant lifecycle (from design to operation and finally to decommissioning). |
| Therms (th) | One therm (th) is equivalent to 1,163kWh or 4,186 million joules. |
| Nuclear tranche | Electrical generation unit consisting of a nuclear boiler and a turbo-alternator generator. A nuclear tranche essentially consists of its reactor type and the power of its turbo-alternator generator. EDF nuclear plants include two or four tranches, and occasionally six. |
| Uranium | In its natural state, uranium is a mix containing three main isotopes (elements whose atoms have the same number of electrons and protons, thus the same chemical properties, but a different number of neutrons):
Uranium 235 is the only natural fissile isotope, a quality which justifies its use as an energy source. |
| Enriched uranium | Uranium, whose isotope 235 content, the only fissile material, has been increased from its low natural level (0.7%) to approximately 4% in order to be used as pressurised water reactor fuel. |
| ERU (enriched reprocessed uranium) | To be used in a reactor, reprocessed uranium (RepU), even if containing more fissile uranium than in its natural state, must be further enriched. It is therefore called enriched reprocessed uranium (ERU). |
| RepU (reprocessed uranium) | Reprocessed uranium (“RepU”), uranium derived from spent fuel reprocessing, differs from natural uranium as it contains slightly more uranium 235 and other uranium isotopes. It is recyclable and RepU fuel assembly refuelling is commonly used in reactors. |
| Vitrification | Process of immobilisation in a glass structure of concentrated solutions of high-level radioactive waste by mixing at high temperature with glass paste. |
| Non-interconnected zones | Zones in France which are not connected (by power lines) to metropolitan France (Corsica and overseas departments). |
