Learning from Incidents and Incident Reporting: Safety Governance at a Belgian Nuclear Research Center (July 2017)
Nicholas Rossignol (Author)
Michiel van Oudheusden (Author)
Science, Technology and Human Values
Volume: 42
Issue: 4
Pages: 679-702
This article examines how incidents are governed in a Belgian Nuclear Research Center by way of an incident reporting system (IRS) named Retour d’Experiences (REX). Drawing on a documentary analysis of incident reports, interviews, and focus groups with personnel, it illustrates how REX enacts a safety governmentality centered on identifying incident causes and culprits. As this governmentality mode obscures the epistemic and political character of incidents, it closes down important opportunities for collective learning about safety and safety governance. It is argued that joint reflection about incidents and resistances toward incident reporting serve as fruitful starting points for a more reflexive safety governance that makes explicit how decisions are made in high-risk contexts. Social scientists can enhance governance of this kind by pointing to different perceptions and evaluations of incidents and by insisting that contending interpretations are confronted and accounted for.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Book
Thomas Raymond Wellock;
(2021)
Safe enough? A history of nuclear power and accident risk
(/isis/citation/CBB609552152/)
Article
Fertel, Marvin S.;
(Summer 2012)
Industry's Safety Record and the Blue Ribbon Recommendations: The Way Ahead for the Management of Used Nuclear Fuel
(/isis/citation/CBB638837860/)
Book
Philippe Saint-Raymond;
(2012)
Une longue marche vers l'indépendance et la transparence l'histoire de l'Autorité de sûreté nucléaire française (A long march towards independence and transparency the history of the French Nuclear Safety Authority)
(/isis/citation/CBB553727094/)
Article
Benjamin K. Sovacool;
M. V. Ramana;
(2015)
Back to the Future: Small Modular Reactors, Nuclear Fantasies, and Symbolic Convergence
(/isis/citation/CBB741146502/)
Article
Lagendijk, Vincent;
Vleuten, Erik van der;
(April 2010)
Transnational infrastructure vulnerability: The historical shaping of the 2006 European blackout
(/isis/citation/CBB001180972/)
Article
Garrick, R. John;
(Fall 2003)
The Current Status, Safety, and Transportation of Spent Nuclear Fuel
(/isis/citation/CBB256747585/)
Book
Siegel, Greg;
(2014)
Forensic Media: Reconstructing Accidents in Accelerated Modernity
(/isis/citation/CBB001500578/)
Article
Bo Hee Min;
Christian Borch;
(April 2022)
Systemic failures and organizational risk management in algorithmic trading: Normal accidents and high reliability in financial markets
(/isis/citation/CBB890038954/)
Article
Maxime Polleri;
(August 2020)
Post-political uncertainties: Governing nuclear controversies in post-Fukushima Japan
(/isis/citation/CBB107146947/)
Article
Monamie Bhadra Haines;
(February 2019)
Contested credibility economies of nuclear power in India
(/isis/citation/CBB710438620/)
Article
Jakob Raffn;
Frederik Lassen;
(2021)
Politics of Nature: The board game
(/isis/citation/CBB033346411/)
Article
Abraham S. D. Tidwell;
Jessica M. Smith;
(September 2015)
Morals, Materials, and Technoscience: The Energy Security Imaginary in the United States
(/isis/citation/CBB992433257/)
Article
Rebecca Jablonsky;
(March 2022)
Meditation Apps and the Promise of Attention by Design
(/isis/citation/CBB875998706/)
Article
Rob Bellamy;
(March 2015)
A Sociotechnical Framework for Governing Climate Engineering
(/isis/citation/CBB453591963/)
Article
Andrew Karvonen;
(2020)
Urban Techno-Politics: Knowing, Governing, and Imagining the City
(/isis/citation/CBB079419264/)
Book
Huub Dijstelbloem;
(2021)
Borders as Infrastructure: The Technopolitics of Border Control
(/isis/citation/CBB684823908/)
Article
Alexander Rushforth;
Thomas Franssen;
Sarah de Rijcke;
(2019)
Portfolios of Worth: Capitalizing on Basic and Clinical Problems in Biomedical Research Groups
(/isis/citation/CBB805796865/)
Article
Cook, Brian R.;
Kesby, Mike;
Fazey, Ioan;
Spray, Chris;
(October 2013)
The persistence of ‘normal’ catchment management despite the participatory turn: Exploring the power effects of competing frames of reference
(/isis/citation/CBB350967664/)
Article
Luciana Landgraf Castelo Branco;
(2023)
Rethinking governance through Samarco’s dam collapse in Brazil: a critique from the STS perspective
(/isis/citation/CBB165051260/)
Article
Poonam Pandey;
Aviram Sharma;
(2017)
NGOs, Controversies, and “Opening Up” of Regulatory Governance of Science in India
(/isis/citation/CBB915250388/)
Be the first to comment!