ABSTRACT
The traditional approach to safety engineering for a nuclear reactor is mainly focused on its technical dimension, while the Human Factors approach focuses on how to optimize the value added by human to the reliability of the system. Safety management seeks to organize the work as well as possible, train employees, develop their safety culture, and so on. This juxtaposition of approaches to reliability illustrates the recurring dilemma faced by at-risk organizations in choosing between the technical anticipation of pre-defined situations and the optimization of the management of the situations by people who, in real time, through their skills and understanding of the situation going on, will adapt their strategy and actions according to that particular situation. These last three years, we have performed a series of Extreme Situation Simulations on Full Scale Simulators in order to test the resilience of the Crisis Organization of EDF during accidents with characteristics similar to the accident of Fukushima. The realization of these tests was an organizational challenge which required up to 80 people for the simulation, and about 5 months for both the preparation and the analysis of the tests.
