IAEA highlights senior management's role in maintaining safety

The board of governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) yesterday adopted a revision to a safety standard related to the role of leadership and management in ensuring safety to protect human life, health and the environment from harmful effects of radiation.  

The IAEA has published over 100 safety standards that represent global consensus on what constitutes a high level of nuclear safety. Some of them - known as General Safety Requirements - apply to all facilities and activities.

The General Safety Requirement on the Management System for Facilities and Activities (GS-R-3) was originally published in 2006. This established requirements for management systems that integrate safety, health, security, quality assurance and environmental objectives. According to the IAEA, a successful management system ensures nuclear safety matters are not dealt with in isolation, but are considered within the context of all of these objectives.

"This important update introduces substantive changes that highlight that prioritizing safety is a responsibility not only for staff on the control room floor, but also for chief executive officers and all personnel."

Juan Carlos Lentijo,
IAEA deputy director general

At a meeting yesterday, the IAEA board of governors approved a revised version of this document. It is the last of the seven General Safety Requirements to be updated in a process that started in 2008.

The revised document - renamed General Safety Requirement Part 2: Leadership and Management for Safety (GSR-2) - "defines the requirements for establishing, implementing, assessing and continually improving a management system", the IAEA said.

It contains new requirements that place stronger emphasis on the role of senior management in establishing and maintaining safety, and it widens its applicability to include, not only licensees of nuclear power plants and other nuclear facilities, but also regulators and smaller users, such as in medical and industrial applications.

"Leadership and management are distinct but connected," the IAEA said. "Consequently, the new safety requirements also address leadership and the attributes of effective leadership as key contributors to safety and safety culture. This is a significant difference from the existing document which does not mention at all the fundamental leadership concept in support to a strong safety culture."

The updated standard incorporates lessons from the 2011 accident at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi plant. It also requires the resolution of any potential safety problems that could arise from measures to strengthen security.

At a press briefing yesterday, IAEA senior nuclear safety officer Helen Rycroft said, "Security and safety have to live in harmony with one another - one cannot compromise the other. And that includes the aspect of safety culture and security culture. To maintain safe operations, to maintain secure operations, both have to work together."

She added, "The safety culture side of the standard ... acknowledges that you have to have a good management system and good leadership, and that in turn develops and supports a good safety culture. This standard reflects this through its requirements."

Juan Carlos Lentijo, IAEA deputy director general and head of its department of nuclear safety and security, said: "The safety standards are a cornerstone for nuclear and radiation safety, and they have to be updated to reflect developments. This important update introduces substantive changes that highlight that prioritizing safety is a responsibility not only for staff on the control room floor, but also for chief executive officers and all personnel. Implementing these requirements will ensure a good safety culture."

Researched and written
by World Nuclear News