Dialogue to crank up Posiva’s safety culture
Interaction and authorities’ viewpoints. The dialogue on understanding and knowledge of safety culture is now being cranked up to a whole new level at Posiva. Posiva’s safety culture seminar in Olkiluoto on Friday, 4 April, was attended in person by more than a hundred people as well as a few dozen more remotely via Teams. An active dialogue was held.
The auditorium was heaving with people already before the seminar started in Olkiluoto. Pia Oedewald from STUK and Safety Manager Kari Kaukonen from Posiva at the front.
Not that safety culture, talking about it and taking action to develop it have not been a core issue for Posiva for some time already. But when one is doing something for the first time in the world, the authorities also want to ascertain that Posiva’s safety culture is upheld on a sufficiently high level.
Ilkka Poikolainen, the President and CEO of Posiva, introduced the objectives of the seminar as follows:
1) Increasing understanding, knowledge , and dialogue of safety culture.
2) The development of leadership and work community skills also promotes the development of safety culture.
3) Better understanding and mastering of common rules and safety objectives at the production stage.
- I, myself, would summarise the essence of safety culture in one question: Do we want to or are we being told to, Poikolainen says.
The Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority of Finland (STUK) was represented in the seminar by Principal Advisor Pia Oedewald and advisors Milka Andersen and Antti Tynkkynen. The presentation given by Pia Oedewald, Safety culture – authority’s viewpoint, was of particular interest to Posiva’s people. The reason for this was that at Posiva, there has been some confusion on what improvements should be made when authorities call for improved safety culture? What indices are used to measure safety culture?
Pia Oedewald says she was surprised by this setting.
- It surprised me to see how many people had come to listen. It was also interesting to learn that people wanted to hear the authority’s perception of safety culture, Oedewald says.
Philosophical definition
The definition of safety culture as defined on STUK’s slide was quite philosophical:
“The concept of safety culture describes this phenomenon: the logic that has been developed in the organisation and followed by the organisation in their actions with regard to safety, in most parts unconsciously.”
The safety significance of culture, on the other hand, is the following:
Culture creates the framework for what is done; decisions, resourcing, work planning, and other practical activities are built on these values and approaches of thinking. If these values and approaches of thinking are in any way skewed, culture acts like a common cause failure – the “faulty” approaches are reflected in all operational processes.
The risk vulnerability is further increased by it being characteristic of the phenomenon that we are blind to the deep-rooted patterns of our own culture and take them for granted.
Joint idea of Posiva and STUK
The seminar was a joint idea of Posiva and STUK. Posiva’s Safety Manager Kari Kaukonen considered it a great opportunity for the future licensee and the regulatory authority to discuss safety culture together. Kaukonen stresses that Posiva’s work for the development of safety culture continues in compliance with the smoothly progressing action programme.
A lot has been accomplished already:
STUK seminar held on 4 April
Status of safety culture 2024 survey completed. Assessment 2+
Training on management and leadership is underway and Posiva’s leadership image is being built
Self-assessment of leadership and safety culture has been completed, including recommendations
Three safety themes have been presented in personnel info events. These presentations continue
The dialogue on safety and safety culture continues in communal events in a consistent manner
Suggestions for improvements in safety culture that have come up in development discussions have been deconstructed into improvement actions by Posiva’s Management Team
The following actions are to be taken in the near future:
Guided plant walkdowns including practices in protected area and controlled area
Reporting of experience feedback from the Trial Run and improvement actions
Posiva is scheduled to start the final disposal of spent nuclear fuel in mid-2020s as the first operator in the world.
Text and photos: Pasi Tuohimaa