Purpose and Objectives

The purpose of this website is to gather, analyze and highlight information on nuclear safety culture and safety management, with emphasis on tools to assist in learning and skill development for nuclear managers.  A companion website publishes the safetymatters blog for discussion of nuclear safety culture.  Together these sites provide a unique resource for safety management, emphasizing the nuclear industry but also applicable to other fields.

One of our key objectives is to build interactive simulation software tools that help nuclear managers think and work more effectively in their complex business environment. NuclearSafetySim, our nuclear safety management simulator, provides a realistic representation of nuclear plant performance, incorporating traditional operating and cost factors with organizational resource variables such as safety culture and employee trust. In the simulation, players make key decisions such as resource allocation and managing problem resolution, under competing priorities for schedule, cost and operations, and must maintain awareness of latent challenges such as complacency. "Practicing Nuclear Safety Management" presents the background and rationale for this management training tool.

Over the last several years the NRC has been developing a policy statement for safety culture that will be applicable to all its license and permit holders.  We believe the policy being developed by the NRC speaks directly to the decision dynamics incorporated in NuclearSafetySim.  For example, the recently issued draft policy statement explicitly recognizes that safety culture must “emphasizes safety, particularly in goal conflict situations, e.g., production, schedule, and the cost of the effort vs. safety”.  In the background discussion the NRC also observed:

“...industry representatives could begin to identify tacit organizational and personal goals that, at times, may compete with a safety-first focus and develop strategies for adjusting those goals. Some monetary incentive or other rewards programs could work against making a safe decision. Current training programs may not address safety culture and its traits or how those traits apply to day-to-day work activities.”

To provide you with a feeling for how management simulations can yield insights into safety management dynamics, we suggest you view this short video.  It shows results from NuclearSafetySim illustrating a typical situation where initiatives are taken to improve safety culture within an organization - yielding short term improvements - but subsequently giving back those gains as the initiatives lose momentum and more fundamental changes are not taken.  Additional discussion of this example is provided in this safetymatters blog post.

What Do We Need From You?

We believe people from many different backgrounds - industry, academia, consulting, government and regulatory - can contribute to our ongoing discussion of nuclear safety culture.  Your participation can include contributing ideas, commenting on our blog, participating in the forum, or providing feedback on proposed models and tools.

An Invitation

Please join us in helping advance the ball in an area critical to the continued success of the nuclear industry, including the renaissance in construction of new plants.

link to Registration

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