Conservation and further development of the safety culture in nuclear power plants under consideration of the current boundary conditions of nuclear energy use in Germany

This report presents approaches to safety culture promotion in nuclear power plants. Challenges of plant shutdown and decommissioning are taken into account. The presentation of approaches to safety culture promotion is divided into two parts. In a first part, approaches to safety culture promotion provided by German rules and regulations were identified. This identification was based on a detailed analysis of the concept of safety culture used in German rules and regulations. This concept expands the safety culture definition provided by IAEA. In this project, this concept was supplemented by safety-culture-relevant aspects of corporate governance, personnel's commitment to plant goals, organizational socialization of personnel, and design of the system of human, technology and organization. The analysis led to the following results: (1) Safety culture is a network of factors which belong to the categories of "human", "technology", and "organization" and which can, in addition, be classified according to the different levels of an organizational culture as defined by Edgar Schein (level of "artefacts", "espoused values", and "basic assumptions"). (2) Approaches to safety culture promotion provided by German rules and regulations are focused on the design of important technical artefacts, the design of the integrated management system, other organizational aspects, and operators' qualification. (3) Since the factors pertaining to safety culture are networked, it is necessary to define a process, which supports the proper coordination of approaches to promote the various factors belonging to safety culture. The second part presents a process for safety culture promotion. Process description addresses and discusses the links between this process and the integrated management system as well as process goal, management of the process, main areas of safety culture promotion, process steps (PDCA-cycle), links to other processes, and possibilities of further development of this process. Areas of safety culture promotion currently covered by the process are the following ones: design of systems of human, technology and organization, teaching, learning, and motivation by incentives to act safely. Future process developments should above all aim at providing steps and measures for further support of personnel's alignment with safety culture and commitment to safety. Approaches to safety culture promotion and main features of the process were discussed with managers of a German nuclear power plant. This plat is shut down. Main results of this discussion are the following ones: there is an urgent need of practical approaches to safety culture promotion in particular with respect to motivate personnel to align behavior with plant goals by the following measures: (1) accountable leadership which sets good examples and (2) maintaining work conditions which support reliable behavior and which foster job satisfaction.