Shouldering Risks

The Culture of Control in the Nuclear Power Industry
Erscheinungsjahr 2006
ISBN: 978-0-691-12777-4
Verlag: Princeton University Press

Buch, Englisch, 408 Seiten, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 595 g

At the world's some 440 nuclear power plants, experts continually monitor their wide safety margins, and at signs of trouble seek out the sources and recommend changes. Too often for their comfort, and for ours, a subsequent problem reveals that these changes were ineffective or never made. Why this self-defeating pattern? What in this technology's culture of control might undermine experts' best intentions? What kind of problem is it to reduce operating risks?Following brief highlights of this industry's history over the last twenty years of accidents, near-accidents, and institutional changes, Shouldering Risks presents excerpts from interviews with some sixty experts about four relatively recent events at three U.S. plants. Drawing also on her earlier field studies at eleven plants in America and abroad, on industry documents, and others' research, Constance Perin identifies unacknowledged elements in this industry's culture of control; for example, control concepts for reactor design, construction, and regulation carry over to risk handling and event analysis, whose efficacy depends instead on recognizing and interpreting the significance of technical and contextual signals on daily display.Far more than the sum of its parts, this highly knowledge-dependent technology operates along an axis of meanings, not only along an axis of functions. A culture of control is, like any culture, an intricate system of claims about how to understand the world and act in it. Here, claims pivot around the dynamics of control theory and productivity based on particular assumptions about the relationships of humans to machines, models to reality, certainty to ambiguity, rationality to experience. These four events and accident analyses show that such assumptions can confound control and produce misleading meanings.Shouldering Risks reimagines a broader and deeper culture of control to reshape our understandings of the intellectual capital appropriate to designing, regulating, organizing, and managing this risky enterprise and, perhaps, other such technologies already here or to come.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Perin, Constance

Fachgebiete

• Technische Wissenschaften Energietechnik | Elektrotechnik Atomenergietechnik
• Technische Wissenschaften Energietechnik | Elektrotechnik Planung und Betrieb von Kraftwerken
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Wirtschaftssektoren & Branchen Energie- & Versorgungswirtschaft Kernenergieindustrie
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Betriebswirtschaft Bereichsspezifisches Management Arbeitsplatz, Arbeitsschutz, Gefahrstoffschutz
• Rechtswissenschaften Arbeitsrecht Arbeitsschutz- und Arbeitssicherheitsrecht
• Geowissenschaften Umweltwissenschaften Nuklearer Strahlenschutz, Nuklearenergie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Preface ix
Acknowledgments xxi
Reading Notes xxv
CHAPTER ONE: Complexities in Control 1
The Limits of Regulation and Self-Regulation 5
The Tradeoff Quandary 9
Concerns, Commitments, and Control 17
The Nuclear Connection: Naval and Corporate Orders 23
The Cycle of Self-Improvement: The Event Review System 28
CHAPTER TWO: Arrow Station: A Leaking Valve in Containment 35
An Account of a Valve Repair Effort 35
Event Inquiries 44
The Teams' Reports 48
Insights and Excursions 59
The Parts Template 88
CHAPTER THREE: Bowie Station: A Reactor Trip and a Security Lapse 98
An Account of an Automatic Reactor/Turbine Trip 98
Trip Event Review Team Report 100
Insights and Excursions 103
An Account of a Security Lapse 120
Mis-Authorization Event Review Team's Report 123
Insights and Excursions 125
The Two Events: Tangential or Essential? 142
CHAPTER FOUR: Charles Station: Transformer Trouble 144
An Account of a "Significant Near-Miss"
on a Generator Step-up Transformer 144
Witnessing "A New Find" 151
Team Reports 154
The Reception of the "Organizational Effectiveness"
Team Report 158
Insights and Excursions 162
CHAPTER FIVE: Logics of Control 196
Three Logics of Control Culture 198
An Infrastructure of Conundrums 203
Control in Real Time 209
Doubt, Discovery, and Interpretation 213
Words, Meanings, and Deeds 217
Standing in the Way: A System of Claims 224
Crystallizing the Difference: Numbers and Values 230
Objective and Subjective, Technical and Substantive 235
Certainty and Ambiguity, Doubt and Discovery 237
CHAPTER SIX: Intellectual Capital for Regulation and Self-Regulation 240
Controlling and Coordinating Knowledge 242
The Scope of Event Reviews 248
"Maintenance Is Going to Save You" 257
"Levels of Maturity" 262
Re-Imagining the Culture of Control
in the Nuclear Power Industry 266
From Functions to Meanings:

A Second Axis for Risk-Reduction 270
Into the Next Half-Century 276
APPENDIX ONE: Senior Management Group at Overton Station 283
APPENDIX TWO: Nuclear Power Plant Modes of Operation or Shutdown 286
APPENDIX THREE: Study Description 288
Notes 289
Bibliography 325
Index 367