Michael Woods (Post-Gazette National Bureau), "Do nuclear plants need regulations on values? 'Safety culture' gets NRC attention", The Post-Gazette (Pittsburgh PA), June 14, 2003

The Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards summoned experts to a meeting Thursday at the commission's [NRC] headquarters in Rockville to help it decide whether to recommend that the agency begin regulating the culture of nuclear power plants.

It would be an upheaval in government regulatory philosophy, with the NRC moving beyond setting rules for mechanical and electrical systems and venturing into the realm of management attitudes, leadership styles, even corporate ethical values.

"We have no insight into the safety culture of the utilities," noted committee member Stephen L. Rosen. "Safety culture" means the collection of characteristics and attitudes found in nuclear power plant owners and employees that reinforces a high priority on safety.

... The NRC has long been reluctant to regulate prevailing attitudes and ideas at nuclear power plants and, in the 1980s, even forbid use of the term "safety culture," said Thomas E. Murley, a former NRC regional administrator who helped pioneer the idea. "At long last, safety culture is back from the graveyard of forbidden lexicon in this country," he noted at the workshop.