After all we have seen, it is time to understand
how safety affects my work.
So, we can say that safety is a multidisciplinary concept
and it would be wrong to focus just on one of the aspects.
We have to cover all of them, from Physics, to Engineering,
Behavioral Sciences including psychology, sociology,
Management Sciences and others.
So, it is not easy for us to understand how all this can be blended
to fit it in our job.
For example, engineers tend to think that the engineering part is
the most important one.
But psychologists could think otherwise, saying that the engineering part
is important, but that there are other factors related to human behavior,
like communications or how do they respond to some situations,
that are more important. And so on with all the professionals in the list.
So, first, and before going more in detail,
let's remember a little bit about the evolution of safety
as we already saw during the NOOC 1.
So, remembering the previous NOOC,
the history of safety could be divided in different ages.
The first age was the Age of Technology.
As we said before, during this age, the main threads to safety
came from technology itself.
So, the main concern during the Age of Technology was
to protect machinery from failures.
Although there were some important goals related to general safety,
like the publication of the Railroad Safety Act that stated
the need to combine safety technology with government regulations.
After Three Mile Island, it was necessary to improve safety.
Technological risks were not the only contributory factor to safety.
Human actions can have a positive and a negative result.
And there is a need to train people to work under non frequent conditions.
Thanks to this, the Age of Human Factors started.
Also, we saw that, in the same year,
the Challenger and the Chernobyl accidents happened.
So, during that time, the Management Age started.
We can say that it was clear that the organizations
had to be included or to be focused on safety.
Managers have to work on their leadership
and their goals have to include safety practices.
And finally, we have that now, after Fukushima,
a new age started, which we call the Inter-organizational
or Inter-organization Age.
That means that we are not alone implementing a healthy safety culture.
All the organizations which have interest in any industrial activity
have to help improving safety,
and be wary of what steps are needed to improve that safety.
So, we can wonder now:
Will there be some new event that will lead to a new era or age?
We can say that after Fukushima, we have not discovered yet
any aspect that is not included in the previous ages.
If anything, it has reinforced, as Chernobyl did,
the role of institutions, regulators and international organizations,
in contributing, by action or omission, to the accident.
So, in Fukushima it was clear that the necessary match did not reach
the safety management systems and the safety culture.
It is essential to know that "work" in the four ages
avoiding falling in actions typical of the Technology Age,
it was easier to understand.
It is also clear that the entire philosophy
of nuclear industry or nuclear safety began at a time when competition
with other sources did not exist.
Both in Fukushima and in previous events, like Davis-Besse and others,
it is evident that the desire to produce and no increase in production costs,
has substantially contributed in the queue that occurred.
Management systems and culture can be strong
to effectively combat these pressures.