ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the general level of safety exhibited in the civilian nuclear power industry of Russia and Ukraine. It examines the various factors—both technological and institutional—that impinge upon safety improvements, and provides an assessment of prospects for the future. Safety culture is an existential philosophy—establishing safe operation as the highest value to which all others are subordinated, including the generation of electricity and profits. The notion of a safety culture is difficult to define, but the results of its absence in a nuclear plant (or anywhere else, for that matter) are immediately obvious. Prior to the Chornobyl accident, and for approximately three years thereafter, Soviet power plants had no written operating procedures and very few written training materials. Soviet managers generally were not advocates of the Dale Carnegie approach, nor did they subscribe to the tenets of Total Quality Management.
