SAFETY CULTURE; CORNERSTONE OF THE NUCLEAR SAFETY CASE

Engineering substantiation forms a major part of the modern standards nuclear safety case and increasingly within safety cases for the process industries: substantiation is itself dependent on safety management systems or so-called "safety culture" to ensure engineered systems perform as required. It follows therefore that the existence of a good safety culture is a prerequisite for a good safety case. The converse is also true; the existence of a poor safety culture will lead to a substandard safety case no matter how convincingly the safety argument is presented. It is during the implementation of the Safety Case that the dependency of the safety argument on safety culture becomes apparent. This paper looks at where in the safety case the dependencies on safety culture exist and also examines safety case implementation strategy employed by nuclear chemical plant which highlight these dependencies and how they are managed. In this way lessons can be learnt by safety case assessors and managers about the importance of safety culture underpinning the safety case and how it should not be taken for granted in developing the safety argument. Although this paper takes the nuclear safety case as its basis, the discussion will be equally applicable to all safety cases within the process industries.