A study on activities of nuclear stations in the U.S. in the aim of enhancing safety culture

After the discovery of a Reactor Vessel Head Degradation at Davis Besse, the NRC, a regulatory body in the U.S., launched an evaluation scheme regarding nuclear stations' Safety Culture. In this evaluation, the NRC examines every inspection finding of conventional Reactor Oversight Program inspections to find out what was the most dominant causal factor with SC aspects. There are no similar analyses of this kind opened to public. This study has its goal of obtaining some useful clue for realizing how to project SC enhancement activities, by making analysis on every ROP inspection finding as well as collecting examples of good practices in improving organizational performance of stations in the U.S. As for the inspection results of ROP, there are no obvious change in the trend of number and types of ROP findings. On the other hand, because of the variety in average number of findings at stations, we could assume that actual condition of SC within a particular station quite differs from other stations. Looking at ROP reports minutely, you may realize that all U.S. stations have been making great effort to improve the efficiency of its Corrective Action Program which is regarded as the key ability to identify and fix undesirable incidents broke out at the station. It is a noteworthy aspect that CAP is not a simple program of quality assurance but also one of the items in power stations to be improved continuously. The concrete elements of this process are realizing current organizational condition by series of Performance Indicators, setting the next goals with the PIs, also evaluating the degree of the achievements with them, and modifying or re-defining new goal of the organization in accordance with new situation. This idea is introduced into broad range of organizational activities all over the U.S., which assure their improvement to be objective and effective. Simultaneously, such way of operation have its staff devoted in own responsibility, which eventually encourage the whole staff in the station to act more creatively. (author)