“Nuclear Security Culture Evaluation Proposal”

In September 2008, the International Atomic Energy Agency published their IAEA Nuclear Security Series No.7 Implementing Guide, Nuclear Security Culture. This was a major step forward in defining Nuclear Security Culture and promoting this important issue. In this paper the authors propose a next step that allows interested parties to begin evaluating and improving Nuclear Security Culture within an organization. This work follows on the efforts of the IAEA when in 2007 they gathered several technical contributors (including the authors) to collaborate and create a 3-day workshop that explains the content of the IAEA Implementing Guide on Nuclear Security Culture. That workshop has been successfully conducted over six times and key to its success are exercise sessions where participants consider the use of indicators in determining the level of desired characteristics within an organization. The proposal presented in this paper builds on those exercises in order to produce an evaluation tool, based on the 68 Management System “Indicators” and 52 Behavior “Indicators,” listed in the IAEA Nuclear Security Culture Implementation Guide. In this paper, the authors propose a simple process of taking the published 30 Characteristics and associated Indicators of Nuclear Security Culture, evaluating an organization on a subjective scale for each Indicator, and then ranking the Characteristics (each of which has between 2 and 8 Indicators). The relative ranking can be used as a measure of the strength of that Characteristic within an organization and may provide insights for how the organization’s Security Culture contributes or detracts from the characteristic. In this paper the authors will propose that this evaluation be done periodically to establish a baseline and to monitor the success of improvement efforts. One final note: This paper presents the personal views of the authors and not necessarily those of Sandia National Laboratories or the IAEA.