In this essay we investigate the "lessons learned" within the domain of human and organizational factors (HOF) from operating European nuclear power plants (NPPs) in a fifty-year perspective. Specifically, we consider learning processes at an industry level that aim at promoting human contributions to nuclear safety. This is done by bringing together two main perspectives: (1) a historical perspective on HOF-related institutional and research initiatives is presented by outlining the history of nuclear safety according to three major nuclear accidents, (2) an applied perspective is provided on how HOF are managed in the field. This latter perspective rests on the results of the EU Project LearnSafe, conducted in the European nuclear industry between 2001 and 2004, and its re-evaluation 15 years later by means of an interview study carried out with 21 European managers from the nuclear industry. Our results reveal that the European nuclear industry has to some extent encoded the HOF lessons learned into routines, tools and systems. The three accidents have promoted a broadening of knowledge, ranging from simple ergonomics to crucial issues of interactions between major stakeholders in the nuclear domain. As a conclusion to our study, we suggest that academia and industry should search for improved collaboration, especially in terms of including HOF into safety activities and linking HOF issues to technical design factors and associated hazard potentials. Moreover, we conclude that avoiding major nuclear accidents requires a continuous re-invention of HOF, which should aim to involve and harmonize divergent interests of several stakeholders, demanding further research and efforts to translate insights into practice.

This chapter gives a historical view on human factors (HF) development in the Swedish nuclear industry. It is argued that work within classic HF fields such as man-machine interface design has been developed in parallel with a more systemic trend focusing on, for example, in-depth analysis of events and organizational assessment and safety culture. The identity and roles of HF specialists are discussed and examples of current practices are given. 

Presents recent breakthroughs in the theory, methods, and applications of safety and risk analysis for safety engineers, risk analysts, and policy makers. Safety principles are paramount to addressing structured handling of safety concerns in all technological systems. This handbook captures and discusses the multitude of safety principles in a practical and applicable manner. It is organized by five overarching categories of safety principles: Safety Reserves; Information and Control; Demonstrability; Optimization; and Organizational Principles and Practices. With a focus on the structured treatment of a large number of safety principles relevant to all related fields, each chapter defines the principle in question and discusses its application as well as how it relates to other principles and terms. This treatment includes the history, the underlying theory, and the limitations and criticism of the principle. Several chapters also problematize and critically discuss the very concept of a safety principle. The book treats issues such as: What are safety principles and what roles do they have? What kinds of safety principles are there? When, if ever, should rules and principles be disobeyed? How do safety principles relate to the law; what is the status of principles in different domains? The book also features: • Insights from leading international experts on safety and reliability • Real-world applications and case studies including systems usability, verification and validation, human reliability, and safety barriers • Different taxonomies for how safety principles are categorized • Breakthroughs in safety and risk science that can significantly change, improve, and inform important practical decisions • A structured treatment of safety principles relevant to numerous disciplines and application areas in industry and other sectors of society • Comprehensive and practical coverage of the multitude of safety principles including maintenance optimization, substitution, safety automation, risk communication, precautionary approaches, non-quantitative safety analysis, safety culture, and many others. The Handbook of Safety Principles is an ideal reference and resource for professionals engaged in risk and safety analysis and research. This book is also appropriate as a graduate and PhD-level textbook for courses in risk and safety analysis, reliability, safety engineering, and risk management offered within mathematics, operations research, and engineering departments.

Evoking positive changes in safety culture or accentuating its positive characteristics has been a long-lasting challenge in safety-critical organizations. While a variety of methods exist to facilitate this process, an understanding of the main factors to take into consideration when leading methodical change in safety culture is often limited. In this paper, the authors describe twelve principles that attempt to summarize the essential good practices of safety culture change. Examples of failed safety culture change initiatives are then analyzed from the perspective of these principles to provide a tentative proof-of-concept of their usefulness. We propose that safety (culture) practitioners can utilize these principles as a reference when leading methodical change in safety culture.

The concept of safety barriers is an indispensable element in analyzing and designing systems where safety is important. In a safety context, a barrier is associated with something that blocks or in other ways hinders a negative state to occur or become worse. A simple description is that a safety barrier is something that prevents an accident from occurring. However, there is a varying understanding of what it really means. This has evolved from different technical traditions and various theoretical considerations. The width of the concept can, to a large extent, be explained by various assumptions of what constitutes a "safety barrier." Such notions could partly be described by a set of parameters, which is suggested in this chapter. Therefore, it is essential to carefully define the meaning of "safety barrier" in all applications, when any doubt of the interpretations could arise.  

The concept of safety culture was first coined to explain the Chernobyl nuclear accident in the late 1980s. From the very beginning, the concept aimed at highlighting and illustrating that safety cannot ever be guaranteed by technical means alone, but rather safety depends heavily on management, leadership, and so-called human and organizational factors. Today, the concept of safety culture has become established into safety management applications in all major safety-critical domains. Nevertheless, there is a large variance in conceptualizations of safety culture. Despite the variance in exact definitions, a consensus exists that safety culture is a multi-dimensional construct. Safety culture theories build on previous research on organizational culture. Edgar Schein's model of organizational culture is the most influential model in the safety field. Safety culture is foremost about people's collective values, beliefs, and assumptions-it is a collective mindset that characterizes a group, not a property of any one individual. The concept of safety culture emphasizes that it matters what the people's conceptions about safety are. The way people perceive safety and risks affects what is done and not done, what is talked about, what is communicated, and subsequently what is perceived as being real.  

Five generic dilemmas shared by most safety reviews are identified, namely the complexity dilemma, the specialisation dilemma, the criteria dilemma, the independence dilemma and the ethical dilemma. These dilemmas are not always made sufficiently transparent, which may lead to a too optimistic view of what can be achieved by safety reviews. A two-dimensional characterisation of safety reviews is suggested; the dimensions are the degree of independence and the scope of the review. In conclusion ten quality criteria are proposed that can be used to cope with the dilemmas of conducting safety reviews.