Abstract

This paper examines the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC’s) pursuit of social science research that could inform the oversight of nuclear power plant management. Perhaps no nuclear regulator has been as supportive of research on the intersection of organizational factors and reactor safety or as cautious in applying those findings to its regulations.

This dissonance was rooted in the NRC’s long-held conviction that it should regulate power plants not people, which conflicted with its regulatory experience after the 1979 Three Mile Island accident (TMI). Intrusive oversight of a licensee’s “business,” it was believed, would destroy its sense of ownership for safety. TMI challenged that understanding of the NRC’s role, and a series of mishaps at other plants compelled the agency to cross the line between regulation and management. The NRC’s relationship with industry became highly adversarial, and the agency turned to social scientists to help establish an objective basis to judge a licensee’s organizational culture. Behavioral experts joined plant oversight review teams and received generous funding to quantify the contribution of organizational factors to accident risk. Scores of scholars at national laboratories and a dozen universities contributed, but the NRC abandoned the research in the mid-1990s in the face of inconclusive research and industry resistance.

In need of a less controversial oversight program, the NRC abandoned direct assessment of plant management for a more quantitative approach that relied on plant performance indicators. When the 2002 Davis-Besse vessel head erosion event came perilously close to a significant loss-of-coolant accident, it raised questions about the appropriate role for the NRC in assessing a licensee’s safety culture. The NRC revised its oversight program to incorporate qualitative insights from its earlier research while still acknowledging the line between regulation and management. The NRC learned that while there were substantial cultural and technical obstacles to integrating safety culture insights with established management and regulatory practices, it was necessary to overcome them. The agency found stability in its contentious oversight program only when it made appropriate room for safety culture expertise.

摘要

本文研究了核监管委员会（NRC）对社会科学研究的追求，该研究可以为核电厂管理的监督提供依据。也许没有哪个核监管者支持组织因素和反应堆安全性的交叉研究，也没有谨慎地将这些发现应用于其法规。

这种不和谐根源于NRC长期以来的信念，即它应该监管电厂而不是人员，这与1979年三英里岛事故（TMI）之后的监管经验相矛盾。人们认为，对被许可人的“业务”进行侵入式监督将破坏其对安全的所有权意识。TMI质疑了解NRC的作用，其他工厂发生的一系列不幸事件迫使该机构跨越了监管与管理之间的界限。NRC与行业的关系变得高度敌对，该机构求助于社会科学家，以帮助建立客观的基础来判断被许可人的组织文化。行为专家加入了工厂监督审查小组，并获得了慷慨的资助，以量化组织因素对事故风险的贡献。

为了减少争议性的监督计划，NRC放弃了对工厂管理的直接评估，而是采用了基于工厂绩效指标的更加量化的方法。当2002年戴维斯-贝斯（Davis-Besse）的船头腐蚀事件危险地接近重大的冷却液损失事故时，它引发了人们对NRC在评估被许可人的安全文化中的适当作用的疑问。NRC修改了其监督计划，以纳入其早期研究的定性见解，同时仍然承认监管与管理之间的界线。NRC获悉，尽管将安全文化见解与既定的管理和监管实践相结合存在很大的文化和技术障碍，但有必要克服这些障碍。