[ RadSafe ] NRC Blog Post on "Questioning Attitude"

[David Lee]

Bill, thank you for your posting it.
You are absolutely correct, it is a milestone beginning. 180 degrees of the
charts.

As a suggestion to the US NRC.
I love these analogies, even one of my many professors warned me not to
over use them.
Any how, remember the famous IRS 3 to 5 years amnesty for the off shore tax
free accounts?
It was doubtful in the beginning, but it worked!

It would be reasonable to offer a similar amnesty program in conjunction
with "The NRC’s Safety Culture Policy Statement".

The point:

My point is: there still is the most fearful Price-Anderson Act, as you all
guys well know.
Temporary amnesty from Price-Anderson will be necessary because it is not
just about what is planning to be done. But also what was done and what may
effect the future planning..
I can not imagine, no offense to the US Navy or ex-navy gentlemen and
gentlewomen, but combination of Price-Anderson and ex-navy
*comradery*culture at
NPP makes the *Robert De Niro's*  "circle of trust" closed to any reforms.

Again, I am not accusing or attacking anyone or any group.

Just my opinion.

http://en.wikipedia
.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93Anderson_Nuclear_Industries_Indemnity_Act

P.S. To be fair and balanced. It is reasonable to have present generation
of reactors to be operated to their operational end with the
current personal culture, present LWR's are based on the navy designs
anyway. "Changing horses in the middle of the river"? May cause more
problems.
Senator McCain as a presidential candidate has said that history of the US
Nuclear Navy is the best example of safety of the nuclear power. I agree.

"You can call me anything but not collect"

And yes, I met Bill Lipton, but I am not sure you, Bill do remember me.
Even so, I stayed until the end of each of your evening classes!
It was long time ago (19 yrs.), my name was different, I was not
naturalized, yet.

The best.

Emil.


On Tue, May 21, 2013 at 7:25 AM, William Lipton <doctorbill34 at gmail.com>wrote:

> I commend the NRC for its recent blog posting on maintaining a questioning
> attitude, which is pasted, below.  I urge every radiation safety
> professional to keep this in mind.
>
> Bill Lipton
> It's not about dose, it's about trust.
>
>
> How a Questioning Attitude Encourages
> Safety<
> http://public-blog.nrc-gateway.gov/2013/05/21/how-a-questioning-attitude-encourages-safety/
> >
> by Moderator <http://public-blog.nrc-gateway.gov/author/nrcmoderator3/>
> Maria E. SchwartzOffice of Enforcement Senior Project Manager
>
> [image: questionnew]Are we there yet? Why is the sky blue? Why is rain wet?
> Children have an endless list of questions as they discover the world
> around them. But as we grow older, most people tend to ask fewer questions.
>
> This may be due, at least in part, to the fact that we start to make
> assumptions about many of the things around us based on what we have
> already learned or observed. Sometimes we ask fewer questions because at
> some point, someone made us feel ashamed that we didn’t know the answer or
> made it clear they had more important things to do than respond to our
> questions.
>
> Re-developing that questioning attitude we embraced as children, however,
> is very important to an organization’s health and critical to its safety
> culture.
>
> The NRC’s Safety Culture Policy Statement
> <http://www.nrc.gov/about-nrc/regulatory/enforcement/safety-culture.html
> >includes
> “Questioning Attitude” as a trait of a positive safety culture. The policy
> statement describes it as a part of a culture where “individuals avoid
> complacency and continuously challenge existing conditions and activities
> in order to identify discrepancies that might result in error or
> inappropriate action.”
>
> A questioning attitude helps to prevent “group think” by encouraging
> diversity of thought and intellectual curiosity. It challenges the entire
> organization to get clarification when something comes up that doesn’t seem
> right.
>
> Examples include situations as simple as walking by a broken door day after
> day without stopping and questioning why it remains broken; or skipping
> over a confusing step in a procedure you use every day rather than getting
> clarification. It could include ignoring an alarm because nuisance alarms
> go off all the time and they never indicate an actual emergency. Or it
> could be something a little more complicated such as not speaking up to
> question a calculation that doesn’t seem right because the senior engineer
> performed the calculation.
>
> A positive safety culture requires the collective commitment by both
> leaders and individual employees to emphasize safety over competing goals.
> A questioning attitude supports that commitment.
> _______________________________________________
> You are currently subscribed to the RadSafe mailing list
>
> Before posting a message to RadSafe be sure to have read and understood
> the RadSafe rules. These can be found at:
> http://health.phys.iit.edu/radsaferules.html
>
> For information on how to subscribe or unsubscribe and other settings
> visit: http://health.phys.iit.edu
>