France Dehaye, who grad­u­at­ed from UTC in 2012, major­ing in Indus­tri­al Process engi­neer­ing, is cur­rent­ly a gen­er­al instal­la­tion engi­neer at EDF in Great Britain. Here is her portrait.

Does she have clear ideas? France Dehaye indeed demon­strat­ed this when, after her prepara­to­ry class­es in Paris, she chose UTC. Among the rea­sons for this choice? “I read a short chap­ter on nuclear physics in my final year at sec­ondary school, and I was imme­di­ate­ly inter­est­ed, because it was the ener­gy that would enable us to move away from fos­sil fuels, which are dam­ag­ing the cli­mate. And yet, mankind needs ener­gy in all areas of life: health, trans­port, indus­try, agri­cul­ture and so on. After my prepara­to­ry class­es, I dis­cov­ered that UTC had a part­ner­ship enabling a dou­ble degree with the Insti­tut Nation­al des Sci­ences et Tech­niques Nucléaires (INSTN), part of the CEA,” she assures us.

From then on, her choice was made. It would be UTC. “In 2008, I was admit­ted to the Indus­tri­al Process Engi­neer­ing branch, where I spent four years, the last of which was spent at INSTN in Saclay,” she explains.

Still think­ing clear­ly? “I did my end-ofs­tud­ies intern­ship at EDF in the oper­a­tions depart­ment, and as soon as I fin­ished my intern­ship I was hired by the com­pa­ny in 2012 in the nuclear safe­ty depart­ment. For six years I worked in a design office in Tours, where I was main­ly involved in safe­ty stud­ies for cur­rent projects such as Fla­manville 3 in Nor­mandy and Hink­ley Point C in the UK, with its two EPR reac­tors. The main part of the job con­sist­ed in writ­ing the safe­ty report, as well as under­tak­ing earth­quake and flood risk stud­ies. Of course, we also had to col­lab­o­rate with col­leagues work­ing on sys­tems, equip­ment such as pumps and pip­ing, instru­men­ta­tion and con­trol, civ­il engi­neer­ing and so on. The aim was to check the reli­a­bil­i­ty of all com­po­nents, so that the plant could meet all pre­de­fined nuclear safe­ty cri­te­ria,” she explains.

But France Dehaye still want­ed to get out in the field. Her wish was grant­ed by the com­pa­ny, as for four years she worked on site main­te­nance mis­sions all over France. “In this job, I left on Mon­day morn­ings and returned on Fri­day evenings and was on call at week­ends if need­ed. I moved from stud­ies on new nuclear pow­er plants to exist­ing facil­i­ties, some of which had been in oper­a­tion for decades. I’ve worked at four plants: Paluel in Nor­mandy, Tri­c­as­tin in the Drôme, Cruas-Meysse in the Ardèche and Dampierre in the Loiret. Where there is main­te­nance, there’s nec­es­sar­i­ly work to main­tain the safe­ty and secu­ri­ty of the facil­i­ties. In this role, I was respon­si­ble for report­ing on progress to both the project teams and the design offices. With my team, I had to ensure that sup­pli­ers met qual­i­ty, cost and dead­line require­ments,” she says.

Then came the call of the “great beyond”. A call heard, yet again, by the com­pa­ny, which sent her, in 2022, to the Hink­ley Point C pow­er plant in Great Britain in the “site engi­neer­ing” depart­ment. “Our role is to pro­vide after-sales ser­vice for the plant design. It’s a ques­tion of help­ing the prime con­trac­tors and sup­pli­ers to build the instal­la­tions accord­ing to our plans, and our require­ments in terms of reli­a­bil­i­ty or safe­ty, for exam­ple”, stress­es France Dehaye, who has­n’t for­got­ten the impor­tance of asso­cia­tive involve­ment from her time at the UTC either.

“As soon as I arrived in the UK, I got involved with Expat Fam­i­ly UK, an asso­ci­a­tion set up dur­ing the Covid pan­dem­ic. My next involve­ment will be with WiN-UK, the local sec­tion of the inter­na­tion­al asso­ci­a­tion “Women in Nuclear”, whose aim is to pro­mote women in the nuclear world. Sad­ly, par­tic­u­lar­ly in France, girls are becom­ing more and more “self-cen­sored”, desert­ing sci­en­tif­ic sub­jects”, con­cludes France Dehaye.

BIO NOTES

• 2012 : UTC Indus­tri­al Process Engi­neer­ing degree and INSTN Atom­ic Engi­neer­ing degree
• 2012 : Safe­ty engi­neer, EDF, Tours
• 2018 : Oper­a­tions Man­ag­er, Heavy Main­te­nance Group
• 2022 : Gen­er­al Instal­la­tion Engi­neer, Hink­ley Point C, UK

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