Education Across Nuclear Silos and the 3S

PATRICK ROBERTS

education across nuclear silos and the 3s

PATRICK S. ROBERTS

Virginia Tech

Alexandria, VA

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Abstract

Education in the nuclear field is divided into silos, but the field would benefit from programs to span silos to illustrate the underappreciated ways in which science and engineering, safety, safeguards, security, and health and agriculture applications reinforce one another. Spanning silos includes the 3S but goes further by showing how nonproliferation, security, and safety make possible the global spread of technology applications for health, agriculture, and power. The silo-spanning idea will be tested using a novel graduate certificate that uses experiential learning to teach both nuclear science and technology and policy.

1.INTRODUCTION

Existing education tends to silo nuclear expertise, where science and engineering are taught separately from policy. Each of those siloes contains its own divisions among the 3S—safety, security and safeguards—as well as among energy and other applications.

The separation of spheres of knowledge is a problem because the field would benefit from knowledge about how nuclear science and engineering, safety, safeguards, security, and health and agriculture applications reinforce one another. Major accidents have shown that risks can be compounded. In safety, an earthquake and tsunami can combine to increase the severity of an accident. Security threats from states or terrorist groups can produce more severe damage when combined with vulnerable physical design or facility siting [1]. The theory of normal accidents holds that complex and tightly coupled systems have the potential for multiple, unexpected failures that could cascade into a larger one [2]. The theory of normal accidents is not a law of nature, though. Instead, it highlights the potential for some organizations, including in nuclear power, to experience system wide failures. One way to mitigate the potential for failures is to increase understanding of how complex systems fit together, and how multiple risks can be compounded. Education across nuclear silos also holds out the potential to be more efficient. For example, nuclear education could examine siting choice and facility layout as a way to mitigate the impact of many kinds of potential events, from technical accidents, to natural disasters, to security threats [3].

2. ELEMENTS OF SPANNING SILOS

Most nuclear newcomer states have 3S (safety, security, and safeguards) regulators.[1] Therefore, future regulators need to understand the nuclear enterprise across the 3S, and the ways in which safety, security, and safeguards support one another. In addition to providing “more with less” in efficiency gains [4], 3S also has political benefits. The 3S approach can provide great confidence in the nuclearenterprise to stakeholders outside the industry [5]. The IAEA’s Requirement 8 states that, “Safety measures, nuclear security measures and arrangements for the Statesystem of accounting for, and control of, nuclear material for a nuclearpower plant shall be designed and implemented in an integrated manner so that they do not compromise one another” [6]. To achieve the recommended integration and communicate measures of success to stakeholders, nuclear power operators need to understand the regulatory environment. All of the Ss have in common the objective or protecting access to nuclear information and materials in different ways [7]. Points of commonality of access, control, and verification could provide efficiencies in inspection and monitoring.

Beyond the 3S, the nuclear enterprise depends on a mutually reinforcing relationship between nuclear power, scientific and technical applications, and nonproliferation. Purely technical education neglects the contribution of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and export controls to the expansion of nuclear power and technology. The NPT and other mechanisms build confidence that technology can be shared for exclusively peaceful uses without fear of diversion. The confidence that technology and materials will be used for exclusively peaceful purposes facilitates the spread of technology to new countries when suppliers remove legal prohibitions and provide material and financial aid for development. An understanding of the political environment is not sufficient to see the nuclear enterprise as a whole however. Purely international relations education neglects an understanding of the current, past, and potential future benefits provided by nuclear technology for a range of applications, from improving agriculture, to combating Ebola.

Beyond subjects specific to the nuclear realm, educators have arrived at a consensus about the need for holistic and critical thinking throughout the course of a career. Almost every review of the use of liberal arts in interdisciplinary education emphasizes the importance of holistic and critical thinking skills. There are a number of conceptions of what holistic and critical thinking entail, but almost all have in common an ability to evaluate one’s environment beyond disciplinary, cultural, or organizational silos using humanistic tools.

Critical thinking and holistic skills are integral to managing and creating a nuclear culture. Numerous evaluations of the nuclear industry emphasize the need to create a safety, reliability, and mindfulness culture. Seminal texts on managing organizational change emphasize the role of imagination and humanistic understanding of people and groups [8], [9]. Of course, organizational change is not so simple.

For example, Khademian [10] finds that leaders matter more for creating cultures in organizations that are in a complex environment, with tasks that are distinct and specialized, and where it is difficult to assess the value of the organization’s work as a whole [11]. Other scholarly literature suggests that leaders themselves have a limited ability to shape culture because other forces—routines, and bottom up forces, and outside in (such as professions) shape culture [12], [13].

Often, leaders who arrive in an organization seeking to change the culture end up falling short of expectations [14]. Organizations are not made of clay waiting to be molded. Rather, leaders need to understand the variety of forces that constrain organizations: internal, from the organization’s culture, and external, from the political and legal accountability structure; and mission-based, from its mandate [15]. The bottom line is that creating a culture requires managerial and process skills that are not often found in contemporary nuclear science, technology, or policy education.

Studies of high reliability organizations (HROs) provide specific ideas for how to maintain reliability and high performance. HROs have managers who focus on the big picture, allow operators to make operational decisions, train continuously, and communicate safety information in multiple ways [16]. Finally, HROs use the time-tested strategy of redundancy—if one crucial system fails, they have multiple backups [17]. Making decisions about how to implement reliability requires making tradeoffs because the pursuit of reliability as a goal is in conflict with other goals such as speed, efficiency, and innovation [18]. Deciding how to prioritize various goals, and to cultivate mindfulness to keep reliability as a goal, requires skills of value judgment and strategy that span science and technology, and policy and management [19].

3. APPLICATION: A GRADUATE CERTIFICATE IN NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND POLICY

There are roughly 400 undergraduate and graduate students in nuclear science and engineering [20]. There are tens of thousands of students in graduate school of public affairs and policy in the United States. Nearly all U.S. graduate programs are open to international students. Some of these programs offer funding to international students on a competitive basis. A graduate certificate would be an ideal venue through which to evaluate the utility of nuclear education across silos. The primary constraint on growing a certificate program is that the demand for advanced graduate education in silo-spanning nuclear enterprise education is small in any one country—even in the United States—compared with the demand for education in many other science, technology, and engineering fields.

The certificate is intended to supplement the education of nuclear science and engineering graduate students in policy and management, and to supplement the experience of nuclear policy students with cross-cutting experience in science and technology. The certificate could also be taken as a stand-alone experience. Required courses include the nuclear fuel cycle, the nuclear nonproliferation regime, and a capstone.

Just as important as the content is the certificate’s approach. It draws on theories of T-shaped learning, in which disciplinary expertise (the “I”) and transdisciplinary breadth (the “-“) are connected by purpose-driven engagement (the dotted lines of a “V”). The certificate supplements students who are gaining disciplinary depth by providing, first, the transdisciplinary knowledge. Key to bridging silos is having courses team-taught by nuclear scientists and engineers and social scientists. The certificate’s related speakers’ series and capstone projects provide space to build transdisciplinary knowledge. Second, the certificate offers purpose-driven engagement through its capstone course, which offers an academic sandbox for students to develop solutions to problems inspired by practice, but that go beyond current thinking. Students and faculty will be required to stretch knowledge and the traditional boundaries of the nuclear field’s silos to address challenges the field is grappling with.

The specific challenges will be identified according to student and faculty interest, as well as engagement with specific cases and policy problems brought forth by professional communities from the government agencies and NGOs with which the certificate team are engaged. While the certificate will provide skills that will be useful throughout a career spanning multiple parts of the nuclear enterprise, the certificate is fundamentally in the service of solving pressing problems for humanity – namely, how can nuclear energy be used, safely, for peace?

4. EVALUATION

How do we know if the graduate certificate contributes to the goals of bridging silos? We will convene a panel of evaluators from industry, government, and academia to evaluate student coursework and provide feedback on skills learned and learning outcomes. We will also conduct a survey of alumni asking whether the certificate contributed toward its stated goals and whether students used the knowledge gained in their careers.

5. REFERENCES

[1]IAEA, Safety of Nuclear Power Plants: Design, Specific Safety Requirements, Safety Standard Series No. SSR-2/1, Vienna, Austria (2012).

[2]PERROW, C. Normal Accidents: Living with high risk systems, Basic Books, New York (1984).

[3]SRINIVASAN, T. N and RETHINARAJ, T.S. Fukushima and thereafter: Reassessment of risks of nuclear power.Energy Policy52 (2013) 726-736.

[4]VARJORANTA, T. Finland’s Integrated Approach to Safety, Security and Safeguards, IAEATechnicalMeeting, Vienna, Austria, November 26-29 (2012).

[5]MATSUDA, I., Statement by Special Envoy of the Government of Japan, 52nd General Conference of the IAEA, September (2008).

[6]IAEA, Safety of Nuclear Power Plants: Design, Specific Safety Requirements, Safety Standard Series No. SSR-2/1, Vienna, Austria (2012) 15.

[7]SANDERS, K.E., POPE, R. B., LIU, Y.Y., SHULER, J.M., Interfaces among safety, security, and safeguards (3S)—conflicts and synergies, INMM 56th Annual Meeting, 2015, Indian Wells, CA, USA.

[8]KELMAN, S.Unleashing Change: A Study of Organizational Renewal in Government. Brookings Institution Press (2005).

[9]MOORE, M.H.Creating Public Value: Strategic Management in Government. Harvard University Press (1995).

[10]KHADEMIAN, A. M.Working with culture: The way the job gets done in public programs. CQ Press (2002).

[11]Ibid., 48-50.

[12]DIMAGGIO, P. J. and Walter W. Powell, eds.The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis. Vol. 17. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press (1991).

[13]WILSON, J. Q. Bureaucracy: What government agencies do and why they do it. Basic Books, (1989).

[14]WEEKS, J. Unpopular Culture: The Ritual of Complaint in a British Bank. University of Chicago Press (2003).

[15]MOORE, M.H.Creating public value: Strategic management in government. Harvard University Press (1995).

[16]RAMANUJAM, R. and ROBERTS, K. Advancing organizational reliability in Organizing for Reliability. Stanford University Press (2018) 3-36.

[17]LANDAU, M. Redundancy, rationality, and the problem of duplication and overlap.Public Administration Review29, 4 (1969): 346-358.

[18]MASDEN, P. and DESAI, V. How high reliability mitigates organizational goal conflicts inOrganizing for Reliability. Stanford University Press(2018), 118-142.

[19]SCHULMAN, P. and ROE, E. Extending reliability analysis across organizations, time and scope,in Organizing for Reliability. Stanford University Press (2018) 194-216.

[20]BURKART, A., U.S. Engagement with International Partners, Technical Meeting on Topical Issues in the Development of Nuclear Power Infrastructure, Vienna, Austria (2015).

6. AUTHOR AFFILIATION

Virginia Tech University, USA,

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[1] For a list of nuclear newcomers and their activity, see for descriptions of regulatory structure, see