Is the Nuclear Regulatory Commission living up to the safety culture standards the agency demands of the regulated industry? And if not, what answers can safety culture suggest for schism that was showcased in pre-Christmas congressional hearings?

The question was raised after four commissioners’ issues with the conduct of the fifth – presidentially appointed Chairman Gregory Jaczko – were spotlighted by two competing hearings, one in the House dominated by Republicans and one in the Senate dominated by Democrats.

Since Jaczko is a former staffer of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, the issue was immediately cast in polarized politics. Democrats claimed a “witch hunt” against a leader trying to toughen nuclear safety, while Republicans backed the two Democratic and two Republican commissioners who claim Jaczko is disrupting agency functioning.

Leaving politics aside, it’s fair to ask how NRC would react to finding management at a nuclear site in the sort of disarray now affecting its own top echelons. In nuclear, more than many industries, it’s accepted that poor management is in itself a risk – a substantial risk – to safe operations.

Safety culture concepts were pioneered in nuclear, forced by a common recognition that the industry has only conditional social permission to profit from potentially deadly technology. An accident at any plant brings everyone else’s operations into question.

Two deadly submarine disasters honed the culture in the nuclear Navy, where the captain is responsible for everything on the ship. So it’s safety culture dogma that an operation simply can’t be safe if the CEO is not personally fully committed. And the CEO
must effectively lead his executive team in a common safety vision.

The NRC’s commission structure complicates applying this template, because legally each of the commissioners is one equal vote. The chairman serves at the President’s pleasure – the title can be moved at any time – but all commissioners are confirmed for five-year terms and can only be removed by impeachment.

Jaczko has, however, been aggressive in asserting the chair’s prerogatives to administrative powers provided the chairman in the law, more so than several recent predecessors who viewed their chairmanships as more team leadership. With that aggregation of power, Jaczko has claimed for himself a CEO level of authority, and hence holds that level of responsibility.

So – politically fair or not – Jaczko’s reaction when faced with his colleagues’ criticism is a crucial issue. Safety culture requires self-criticism and teamwork. A CEO’s first job is to understand the problem and identify objectively his own share in it.

But Jaczko told the Senate panel he just didn't know about serious problems his "management style" and “passion” for nuclear safety were allegedly causing until shortly before the hearings. He even said he was learning new specifics right then.

The hearings were held two months after Jaczko was sent a memo, with a copy of another memo sent to the White House the same day, by the other four commissioners – Democrats William Magwood and George Apostolakis and Republicans Kristine Svinicki and William Ostendorff. The memos detailed their issues with Jaczko, including his personal and professional conduct with them and senior staff, and alleged attempts to compromise the scientific independence of the staff. In the safety culture world, that memo should have set off seismic alarm bells and galvanized Jaczko into a whirlwind of action.

Instead Jaczko spoke, two months later, of wanting to sit down with his fellow commissioners to find out what the “miscommunication” was about. No one asked why he hadn’t done that for two months – a question NRC would most certainly ask a licensee CEO.

Moreover, Jaczko didn't seem to realize that, in a safety culture world, his defensive claim of ignorance was in itself an admission of leadership failure.

Second, safety culture requires some flattening of hierarchy and a team-oriented approach that values the skills of every person in the organization.

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This should be a natural fit with NRC, an agency whose staff pride themselves on their scientific credentials (a high percentage of the staff have PhDs). Failing to respect and value this reservoir of expertise would be, for any management, an incredible waste of resources.

Yet there have been increasing complaints about how the chairman treats people since he was elevated from commissioner to chairman. This treatment, crucially, involves not just behavior like screaming fits but also alleged attempts to compromise the staff’s scientific independence by forcing officials to change recommendations to ones the chairman personally agreed with – behavior NRC would never accept on a nuclear site.

So it's encouraging, in a safety culture view, to note that the other four commissioners testified, in both the House and the Senate, that the major factor in their decision to seek White House intervention in October was Jaczko's alleged attempt to muzzle professional staff.

All four said their worries climaxed when senior staff returned from an early October retreat, where the chairman spoke. Senior staffers told commissioners, individually, that the chairman had directed the staff to support policies he wanted, not give their independent opinions, which is the staff’s historic and legal role.

It’s discouraging that Jaczko, in the hearings, did not loudly, strongly, strenuously, absolutely deny wanting the staff to bend to his opinions. The charges of intimidation of individual staffers got more question time from lawmakers, but the allegation that Jaczko tried to subvert staff independence was the most serious charge made by his colleagues. It should have elicited passionate outrage from any safety-conscious leader.

Instead, Jaczko’s testimony showed someone who seemed to believe he has been blameless and the fault lies with others. When asked by one Congressman to name one thing – just one – he had done wrong and would change, Jaczko was utterly at a loss for words.

Safety culture requires ability, on the part of everyone but especially leaders, to self-criticize and learn from mistakes. Anyone who wants to be a leader must also elicit that behavior in his team, and then turn group performance around. Traditional management with a boss issuing orders does not work in a safety culture.

The nuclear industry has shown, after decades of trial and error, that safety culture challenges can be confronted successfully. The plants with the safest records also happen to be the most profitable long-term.

Safety is a process maintained by a constant striving for excellence. That means recognizing that no matter how good each of us is, we can always do better. Anyone who stops striving starts sliding downhill. It’s not a comfortable or easy way to work or live, but it’s a requirement in a risky technology like nuclear.

The safety culture principles that NRC's leaders demand for safe operations in the nuclear industry demand that NRC's leaders confront their own differences with the same values. Commitment to safety – self-criticism – mutual respect – team leadership.

A good safety culture eschews blame and focuses on identifying problems and their root causes and crafting fixes. That refocusing is the next, if uncomfortable, step for the NRC commission.

There appears little chance of some political fix from outside – it’s up to NRC’s leaders to seize the challenge and turn things around, to maintain effective regulation. It’s fortunate that the industry’s safety culture offers a map through the minefield.