Quality management

Safety has the highest priority in a nuclear power plant. The operator must ensure that safety is considered during all business activities, and that safety measures are implemented with high priority. This results in high requirement for own and external staff, as well as particularly for suppliers.

In the convention on nuclear safety which was adopted in Vienna on 17 June 1994, Switzerland agreed to promote an effective nuclear safety culture and to ensure that programmes for continuous quality assurance are set up and implemented. The goal of these programmes is to fulfil all requirements for all activities relevant to nuclear safety. This obligation was enshrined within the Swiss nuclear energy legislation. Thus, for example an explicit requirement for a quality management programme for the entire lifecycle of a nuclear installation was set out, starting with project scoping and only ending with the end of decommissioning.

Continuous improvement is achieved by means of an integrated management system.

The International Nuclear Safety Group (INSAG), an advisory expert panel of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has developed a series of internationally accepted standards and described them together as “Safety Management System”. INSAG places emphasis on the approach of incorporating safety as part of the quality management system rather than leaving it separate from other activities. As a result, the safety culture is an important element of quality management within nuclear power plants.

Operators view the safety of their nuclear power plants as the top priority. For this reason, they place high importance on a good safety culture in the power plant. By good safety culture they mean the optimal cooperation of their business culture and their leadership principles with the individual patterns of behaviour of the employees. Safety culture is meant as an integral term which covers all relevant aspects of technical and operational safety.