Study on team characteristics influencing on nuclear safety culture in Korea based on Bayesian networks

The safety culture of Korean nuclear power plants has been settled down as an organizational culture since the Chernobyl accident in 1986. Reason (1997) proposed that safety culture is a sub-culture of corporate culture and sub-culture is a term that can be used interchangeably to a sub-group of people (i.e., department, workgroup). Therefore, the safety culture of organization comprised of various teams can be told as a culture to reflect team characteristics and interact with each other. Team characteristics have something to do with a successful task performance and task efficiency. However, the team characteristics in nuclear power plant have to consider safety preferentially rather than performance. Team characteristics for a safety are necessary to ensure and enhance the safety of safety-critical system. This paper proposed team characteristics for a safety which influence on the strong and vulnerable area of safety culture. These characteristics were analyzed on the basis of the safety culture evaluation which was performed to measure the level of plant workers' safety culture in 2013. The model of team characteristics was constructed considering Bayesian inference and the result was proposed according to workers' awareness. Safety team characteristics have a direct or indirect effect on the safety of nuclear power plants. Therefore, if they are improved and trained continuously, the safety of nuclear power plants might be enhanced. (author)