A Safety Culture Maturity Matrix for Nuclear Regulatory Bodies

Benoît Bernard

doi:10.3390/safety4040044

Abstract

The concept of safety culture has attracted a great deal of attention. Since the rise of the concept, progress has been made regarding the definition of safety culture and the development of tools dedicated to safety culture oversight and self-assessment. In addition, these recent advances have been made across different high-hazard industries, and obviously in the nuclear world. Nevertheless, little attention has been paid to tailored methods allowing a regulatory body to assess its own safety culture. The aim of this paper is to present a framework adapted to nuclear regulatory bodies or TSOs (Technical Safety Organisations) in order to guide them in understanding their own safety culture through a “Safety Culture Maturity Matrix”.

Highlights

Regulatory bodies have a pivotal role in promoting and overseeing safety culture within nuclear installations
There is a need for a regulatory body to have a deeper look into its own safety culture and into the way culture shapes the regulatory response to safety issues [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]
We highlight that developing this kind of oversight strategy implies the regulatory body having a deep understanding of its own safety culture

Summary

Introduction

Regulatory bodies have a pivotal role in promoting and overseeing safety culture within nuclear installations. Beneath this commonplace, there is a need for a regulatory body to have a deeper look into its own safety culture and into the way culture shapes the regulatory response to safety issues [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]. We highlight that developing this kind of oversight strategy implies the regulatory body having a deep understanding of its own safety culture. In this context, a regulatory body safety culture self-assessment model applied within the Belgian Technical Safety Organisation (TSO) is proposed.

Objectives

Findings

Discussion

Conclusion