The influence of organisational and management factors on safety performance in NNPPS. Rand D project

The direct influence of organisational and managerial factors on safety performance in nuclear power plants has been widely proved by two findings, the analysis of their operating experience and the differences in safety levels reached by similar installations. Specially, the study of majors accidents such as TMI-2 and Chernobyl have demonstrated that the technical deficiencies are not the only root causes, but there are a whole set of human, organisational, managerial and social factors which are the origin from most of these deficiencies. In recent years, this fact is emphasised with the nuclear industry involved a process of change. The deregulation of the electricity market, which has increased the economic pressures to the companies and has driven in many cases to restructures in ownership (mergers, acquisitions), downsizing processes and outsourcing parts of the work, jointly with the development of information technologies and computer networks and with a change in the regulatory and social climates are some of the nre factors affecting the performance of nuclear power plants that have addressed, even more, to the need of re-viewing and assessing the impact of organisational aspects on their safe performance. There have been international efforts to analyse the influence of organisational factors in the safety of nuclear power plants following different approaches. Research institutions, utilities and regulatory bodies. individually or in co-operation, have tried to develop practical tools for taking into account the organisation. According to these international efforts the Association of Spanish Utilities, UNESA, and the Spanish Nuclear Regulatory Body, CSN, have included in 1998, for the first time in their Co-ordinated Plan for Research, an innovative five years R and D project entitled Development of methods to evaluate and model the impact of organisation on nuclear poer plants safety whose main objectives are to analyse the impact of organisation and management on nuclear power plants safety and to develop methodologies useful for licensees due to their contribution to increase the reliability of the Spanish nuclear power plants. Finally, it is worthy to highlight that this Spanish research project has integrated the efforts and criteria of the nuclear industry, of the regulators and of the researchers in charge of its development and it has a multidisciplinary character, with the collaboration of different Spanish universities and with the co-operation of several international institutions widely involved on this research. (Author)