The 2022 USA Executive Summit was a great opportunity to see old friends, meet new people, and for me, to share my passion for the USA Nuclear Safety Culture Assessment (NSCA) Process. It was such an honor to speak at the General Session and discuss how the USA NSCA Process can help ensure that utilities and our supplier partners have a strong nuclear safety culture, and that we are all positioned to support the growth in our industry that we all want. Immediately following the USA Executive Summit, we began working with Doug VanTassell and his team at Paragon to schedule their first USA NSCA in October. Through the support of our USA Utility Members and other utilities across the United States providing industry peers, we have completed eight NSCAs so far in 2022 and are scheduled to perform four more for a total of twelve NSCAs in 2022!

The USA NSCA Process, based on INPO 12-012, Traits of a Healthy Nuclear Safety Culture, helps ensure that we have working environment where safety is the overriding priority and is not compromised by production. This is accomplished by using data from a confidential pre-assessment survey in conjunction interviews conducted by industry peers to identify through a team approach the traits of a healthy nuclear safety culture that require attention by senior leaders.  The ten traits evaluated are:

• Personal Accountability
• Questioning Attitude
• Effective Safety Communication
• Leadership Values and Actions
• Decision Making
• Respectful Work Environment
• Continuous Learning
• Problem Identification and Resolution
• Environment for Raising Concerns
• Work Processes

During the NSCA Process presentation at the Executive Summit, one of the questions asked was if there are any specific trends or traits that are more frequently identified as needing attention. The three traits that have been most frequently identified recently are:

• Continuous Learning (CL.4) as it pertains to knowledge transfer and retention
• Leadership Values and Actions (LA.1) as it pertains to resources and finding the right balance of workload and staffing
• Leadership Values and Actions (LA.2) as it pertains to seeing supervisors, managers and senior leaders in the filed interfacing with employees and reinforcing standards.

We look forward to performing the remainder of the USA NSCAs we have scheduled for 2022 and beyond as we believe that our process is the gold standard in the industry. As previously stated, we couldn’t perform NSCAs without our USA Utility Members and non-USA Members providing the industry peers and we look forward to that continued support. One final take-way from the presentation at the Executive Summit. The catastrophic events at Boeing and Wells Fargo that we discussed demonstrate that we are all vulnerable to the impacts of a poor nuclear safety culture. For our supplier partners, if you would like to discuss performing a NSCA at your facility, please contact me (Alec McGalliard) so we can get started. I am excited to work with you!

Alec McGalliard, Director – Fleet Improvements & Support