Issues of safety culture: Reflections from the LearnSafe project

The LearnSafe project has been investigating processes of management of change and organizational learning at nuclear power plants across Europe. The focus of the project has been upon senior managers at nuclear power plants, who are responsible for strategic choice and resource allocation. This focus was selected due to the importance of their role in decisions, approaches and attitudes that have an influence on the safety and economy of the plants. In the project two large data sets have been collected with senior management perceptions at nuclear power plants in five European countries. The first
data set contains challenges the managers see for continued operation of the nuclear power plants. The second data set contains views on facilitators and hindrances for organizational learning. The data sets have been analyzed to investigate similarities and differences between plants and countries. The results provide many interesting insights on issues related to safety culture.