Assessing safety from the point of view of the human factor in the nuclear industry

The scope of safety in the nuclear industry in France places safety in an institutional context marked by the tripartite relations between the operating of a complex, high-risk process, regulatory authorities and ergonomists providing technical support to these authorities. This is the particular context in which the ergonomists responsible for the human factor safety assessment have been led to develop intervention methods which incorporate, among other things, the fact that the request for an assessment is issued by the safety authorities and not by the utility, which remains the actual subject of the assessment. An illustration is given of the approach fo1lowed by the ergonomists, based on the particular case of a safety assessment of plans to reorganise operations teams in nuclear facilities in France. The authors go on to show that it is important for the human factor safety assessment not to take place at the 'back-end' of the process, but to respond to a dynamic process of shadowing intended to encourage the utility's project. This approach, based on an attempt to negotiate a compromise between the various partners involved in the assessment has led to a shift of attention from the final result to the stages and the resources needed to achieve it. (author)