Safety culture in the nuclear power industry : attributes for regulatory assessment

Abstract

Safety culture refers to the attitudes, behaviors, and conditions that affect safety performance and often arises in discussions following incidents at nuclear power plants. As it involves both operational and management issues, safety culture is a sensitive topic for regulators whose role is to ensure compliance with safety requirements and not to intervene in management decisions. This report provides an overview of proposed safety culture attributes and worldwide approaches to safety culture assessment and identifies those attributes that should be of high priority to a regulator deciding to assess safety culture.