A human performance programme to improve front-line nuclear operations

Abstract

Safe and reliable operations in high-hazard industries are of paramount importance not only to the managers of the organisation and the people that work for them but also to the members of the public who live near the facilities or who may be affected if something was to go wrong. Any operational high-hazard industry should have systems and processes in place to ensure that the likelihood of a significant event occurring is very low. However, taken on a global scale, such events still occur and investigations into them have highlighted a range of problems ranging from engineering deficiencies through to organisational cultures that do not support safe and reliable operations. The challenge is, therefore, for all industries, which have systems in place to guard against such low-frequency, high-consequence events to ensure that the barriers remain robust and not weakened in any way. Through the experience of the National Nuclear Laboratory (NNL), this paper outlines work carried out to increase the levels of awareness of human fallibility in the workplace at NNL as a part of a high-reliability organisation strategy to protect against a low-frequency, high-consequence event.