The safety of nuclear power plants under the shareholder value orientation - example Northeast Utilities

Usually the safety of nuclear power plants is regarded as a technical question. Thereby humans only as a part of the man-machine system play a safety-relevant role usually. On this picture, the national regulation of this safety, the 'nuclear supervision' is designed. An innovative investigation of the Yale School of Management has concerned with the incidents around the so-called Millstone reactors in Waterford, Connecticut, and the economic collapse of the regional supplier Northeast Utilities (NU). The change of the corporate culture of the operator of the nuclear power station to a shareholder value orientation has released this 'enterprise disaster'. This investigation permits a first insight into the changed requirements on supervision, which goes beyond the nuclear supervision and which includes the price control in view of this change of the corporate culture