Björn Wahlström

Learning organizations for nuclear safety

Organizational learning (OL) is a crucial component of operational excellence in nuclear power plants. OL relies on performance assessments, change management and continuous improvements. OL has become increasingly important for the nuclear industry in its adaptation to changes in the political and economic environment, work force, technology in plants, and organizations of the nuclear utilities. A danger in this process is that even minor problems may trigger a chain of events in which the risk of deteriorated safety and/or diminishing trust in the safety standards of the particular nuclear power plant becomes possible. The paper describes a project that considers demands placed on the nuclear power plant management in order to create methods and tools to approach them. The involvement of nuclear power plants in the project provides a unique possibility for interactions between research and practice to benchmark approaches to safety management in different cultures and in stages of change. To ensure the maximum benefit for the participating nuclear power plants, results are tested and adapted continuously in the project.

Organisational factors and nuclear safety - Issues to address in research and development

The influence of organisational factors on nuclear safety has been identified in several studies. In spite of their importance no integrated approach to address them seems to have emerged. The paper starts with issues identified in the LearnSafe project to discuss how they have been addressed in research and development within Finland and Sweden and discussed their importance in a larger frame. This discussion is used to suggest a research agenda for what could be called a midfield approach, where utility and regulatory needs could be combined. The paper serves at an introduction to the discussion part of the special session on Organisational learning and learning organisations - the LearnSafe project three years after.

Management systems and safety culture; reflections and suggestions for research

Management systems can be seen as the software of an organisation. Present views on managements systems have emerged from several sources and have now been integrated into the guiding documents produced by IAEA. A discussion of the new documents has in Sweden been initiated within the Vattenfall Nordic Production Safety Management Institute (NSMI), which recently has been established to support the production units in Sweden. The paper starts with a brief description of NSMI and its main tasks. Management systems are then discussed in more detail to suggest research needs within management systems and safety managements. A conclusion of the paper is that a better understanding of the structure and management systems is needed to remove present difficulties in the application of management systems at the nuclear power plants.