The Role of the Regulatory Body and the Operator

12.3.1

The Role of the Regulatory Body

One of the roles of the AECB is to make sure that licensees include human factors in the design, assessment, and operation of nuclear power stations. This is done through direct interaction with licensees about:

• design and modifications • audits and assessments

• research projects for both direct application and the development of future regulatory tools

The benefits of the application of human factors principles are far-reaching in that human error may be reduced, operations made more efficient, and unsafe conditions prevented.

For each major design project undertaken by licensees, the AECB monitors the progress of that effort. This may be done through:

• licensee submission of human factors plans • design guides and other documentation • update and progress meetings

This process continues through the commissioning phase.

During the operational phase of a project, the AECB addresses various issues related to the operation and maintenance of the equipment. In addition, personnel and organizational issues are addressed. These may include, but are not limited to:

• staffing levels

• organization and management • operator performance

• maintenance

• work control

• event analysis feedback • operating experience feedback

12.3.2

Recent Human Factors Activities at AECB

Over the past year, the Human Factors Section of the AECB has focused efforts on several areas including:

FUEL HANDLING

• A research contract to identify the human factors issues associated with changing from Fuelling Against the Flow (FAF) to Fuelling With the Flow (FWF) at Bruce A was completed in March 1997. The study identified a number of human performance issues associated with the transition to FWF in these particular CANDU reactors. A number of recommendations for the transition period, and for the long term operation and maintenance of the Bruce A fuel handling systems, were made to the licensee.

• The Human Factors Section commissioned a follow-up study to a 1994 research project on human factors issues in fuel handling at Darlington. The overall finding of the follow-up assessment indicated that many positive improvements had been made since the original study, including:

÷ _{improvements to operating manuals}

÷ _{better tracking of Significant Event Report (SER) actions}

Recommendations were made about areas for ongoing AECB monitoring, and a small number of outstanding issues to be addressed by OHN were identified.

DEVELOPMENTS IN SAFETY CULTURE INITIATIVES

A major goal of the AECB is to develop and implement a systematic method for the regulatory assessment of licensees’ organization and management before the year 2000. This includes both CANDU reactors and other nuclear facilities. Considerable advancements were made during 1997 towards achieving that goal.

Building on work from previous stages of the research project, a model of human organizational characteristics in a CANDU nuclear power station was developed. The basis for that development was Mintzberg’s Machine Bureaucracy model3_{. However,} it was discovered that the model did not adequately describe the influences of corporate level and dynamic external processes on Canadian nuclear power stations. This problem was resolved by combining aspects of two other Mintzberg models, the Adhocracy and Professional Bureaucracy models, into the Machine Bureaucracy. The resultant hybrid is called the Canadian Adaptive Machine Model (CAMM).

The CAMM was used to develop a number of hypotheses that were tested in a field situation with the cooperation of a Canadian nuclear power station. A sufficient number of the hypotheses were corroborated to support the adoption of the CAMM as a basis for further development of the organization and management assessment method. Arrangements are being made to further refine the tools used in the prototype methodology and this will form part of the research effort for 1998/99.

A seminar was held in Ottawa in December 1997 at which the results of the work described above were presented. The final report of that phase of the project will be released in the near future.

SIGNIFICANT EVENT REPORTING PROGRAM EVALUATION

During August 1997, the Human Factors Section conducted an appraisal of the Darlington Operating Experience Root Cause Analysis process. This was part of an ongoing effort on the part of the AECB to evaluate these programs at each CANDU nuclear power station in Canada. The process was found to be in a state of flux due to recent OHN initiatives in this area. As a result, further examination will be made after OHN has declared the new event reporting and investigation process to be fully in place.

RESEARCH CONTRACT ON THE PSYCHOLOGICAL IMPACTS OF ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE

Concerns have been received from project officers about the psychological impact on OHN employees as a result of the lay-up and decommissioning of certain OHN facilities. In response, a short-term contract was initiated to obtain state-of-the-art information about the key issues in such circumstances. This contract has identified several performance indicators that can be used by the AECB to monitor the degree of any stress-induced behaviour change at OHN.

12.3.3

The Role of the Operator

The operator plays a key role in the detection and correction of human errors. The following are a few of the methods used to provide the ability to detect and correct human errors before their occurrence:

• self-checking and peer reviews that are implemented to reduce the incidence of human errors which involve incorrect manipulation of equipment;

• independent and second verifications to provide another method of identifying human errors which involve incorrect equipment configuration;

• providing experience feedback; the operator has the ability to identify weaknesses in procedures that could potentially result in human errors. Procedures can then be improved to effectively provide input/feedback to the Operating Experience Program.