The Nuclear Navy's Industrial Principles are a prime example of the nuclear navy's
industrial morality (from Hyman G. Rickover, “An Assessment of the GPU Nuclear
Corporation and Senior Management and its Competence to Operate TMI-1,” 19
November 1983)
a) Background
i) "Attaining competence and reliability in nuclear operations is difficult, but
recognizing them is not. In fact, with experience in operation, it is possible to
lay down certain principles that are essential to safety ..."
ii) "I emphasize that these are principles, not procedures or practices.
Procedures or practices must be changed as circumstances change. Principles
are constant and can be applied now and in the future. If management is
imbued with these principles and accustomed to using them, it will adapt to
change ... If management has chosen such a course, it will lead to competent
and dependable operation."
(1) An industrial morality asks fidelity to principles that define and uphold a
special competence - the fitness to operate nuclear reactors safely and
reliably.
(2) Notice how an industrial morality articulates standards of excellence that
embody a conception of the institution at its best. In each case, the nuclear
navy's principles define an appropriate excellence (a "criterion of
competence" in Rickover's terms) that is only variably achieved and that
must be honored to ensure a nuclear plant's "fitness to operate" in a
"competent," "dependable," and "safe" manner.
iii) The nuclear navy's industrial principles are well-defined (much more so than
the commercial nuclear power's pre-TMI days) and very demanding as well.
"Although easily stated and readily defined," as Rickover put it, "these
principles are exceedingly demanding of a management which chooses to
adopt them."
(1) These industrial principles have a distinctly moral dimension. They can
be used to assess a nuclear utility's moral competence: management's
integrity or commitment to responsible behavior.
b) Rising Standards of excellence
i) Excellence in operating nuclear power plants cannot be achieved merely by
meeting a set of minimum standards. A technology having inherent public
risk, a technology which is still new and evolving, must be built upon rising
standards of excellence. By raising standards and goals when lower
thresholds of competence have been met, utility managers should be expected
and encouraged to do more than merely meet regulatory requirements. They
should be expected and encouraged to achieve levels of performance which
meet their own professional standards of excellence, and which equal or
exceed the best practices in the industry. The degree to which a management
understands and applies this principle is one measure of its competence and
reliability.
c) Technical self-sufficiency
i) Nuclear power is a technology whose complexity far exceeds that of other
common methods of generating electricity ... It is essential that decision
making managers not only have extensive technical training themselves, but
that they also have expert analytical and engineering resources readily
available within their own organization. It is insufficient to rely solely, or
even primarily, on outside contractors or consultants for technical support, a
practice which is commonly used. A nuclear utility must have its own broadbased technical staff capable of all but the most specialized services."
d) Respect for radiation.
i) One criterion for judging the quality of management of a nuclear plant is the
degree to which radiation control ... is given prominence in organizational
level, in staffing, and in the demand for high standards of performance in this
area. This attitude of management is not always found because radiation
problems are new even to experienced managers in non-nuclear plants and are
generally underrated. Radiation sources are elusive and the effects of poor
radiation control are not easy to see. There is a tendency to look on the control
requirements as overdone and, in any case, to be within the capability of the
normal work force to carry out.
e) Facing Facts
i) Facing up to difficulties, regularly informing higher levels of management of
problems and determining and correcting their root causes involve attitudes
and practices which are essential to operating competence. Unfortunately,
there is a disposition in all operating organizations to minimize the potential
consequences of problems and to try to solve them with the limited resources
available at the level where they are first recognized. The practice of forcing
problems up to higher levels where greater resources can be applied must be
assiduously fostered by top-level managers.
f) Importance of training
i) The selection and training of operators is at least as important as any of the
elements of safe reactor operation. It is vital that mental abilities, qualities of
judgment, and level of training be commensurate with the responsibility
involved in operating a nuclear station. A management's attitude toward
excellence in operation and its understanding of how to achieve excellence are
both revealed in the quality of training provided.
g) Concept of total responsibility.
i) Operating nuclear plants safely requires adherence to a concept wherein all
elements are recognized as important and each is constantly reinforced.
Training, equipment maintenance, technical support, radiological control, and
quality control are essential elements, but safety is achieved through
integrating them effectively in operational decisions. Management's
understanding of this principle at the corporate and plant levels is a valid
measure of competence. The organizational structure gives some indication
of management’s awareness, but is less important than understanding and
applying the principle.
h) Capacity to learn from experience.
i) “Since we are dealing with persons and machines which cannot be made
perfect, it is important to recognize that mistakes will be made. We must do
our best to design machines having tolerance for mistakes and to continue to
improve them through experience. This process of evolutionary improvement
... depends on a capacity to acknowledge mistakes and to determine and
correct their underlying causes whatever the cost. An inability or
unwillingness to learn from experience is intolerable in nuclear operations.
i) Summary
i) "These principles express attitudes and beliefs. They acknowledge the
complex technology. They recognize that safe nuclear operations requires
painstaking care. They declare that a management must be responsible - all
the time ... I believe that our criteria, and the principles on which they are
based, measure more than the structural or technical adequacy of an
organization. If used knowledgeably, they can expose a management's
motivations to act responsibly, which we call integrity. A lack of integrity
would be incompatible with conformance to these criteria.”
ii) By involving attitudes, beliefs, and motivations of this sort, the nuclear navy's
industrial morality extols a distinctive moral posture - always mindful of
nuclear technology's grave risks, always committed to thorough and
painstaking are, always motivated by a keen sense of responsibility of the
technology's tested principles of operation. In a word, it asks for integrity.
iii) In some respects, the navy's approach to nuclear safety was similar to the
NRC's with one significant difference: Rickover's nuclear navy has always
taken institutions seriously and has always considered institutional safety as
important as engineering safety.