Integrating socio-technological factors analysis into nuclear power plant event report and safety evaluation: A systematic framework

Nuclear power plants (NPP) are complex socio-technological systems where safety is the supreme concern for all activities. While studies of past accidents reveal that technical, human and organizational factors are major contributors to violation of safety, a generically accepted paradigm for safety assessment is still unknown. Meanwhile, reporting safety-relevant event occurred in NPP operations has already become a common practice in many countries, which offers a good opportunity to enhance understanding on the mechanism that affects safety, as well as to improve data quality for further studies. Combining with recent progress in Probabilistic Safety Assessment (PSA), this paper provides a systematic framework to integrate socio-technological factors analysis into event report, in order to extract useful data from real cases, to conduct first-hand safety analysis and to in turn benefit further PSA studies, for the ultimate goal of improving safety in NPP daily operations.