The human factor in the nuclear arms and nuclear power plants security systems.

Nuclear arms should remain to be of vital importance for Russia, especially during the period of restoring its economic might, in conditions when the U.S. Administration sometimes ignores the role of the United Nations, IAEA and other international organizations. The United States continues to store its nuclear weapons on territories of nonnuclear NATO members, which is tantamount to transferring to them indirect control over atomic weapons. (1)

We can expect, as a multipolar world is taking shape, a greater number of accidents and disasters involving nuclear weapons, a growing threat of their accidental or unauthorized employment. (2) Nuclear arms systems and nuclear munitions pose a considerable hazard to military personnel, local populations and the environment at the stage of their servicing and maintenance. Their transportation, accidents, errors and unauthorized actions by the personnel, attacks and natural calamities are additional sources of hazard. (3)

The human factor is of exceptional importance in nuclear submarines that carry nuclear weapons and are powered with nuclear propulsion plants (NPP). Safety of nuclear weapons carried on nuclear-powered submarines (NPS) has a logical link to general safety of nuclear reactors. Accidents involving the latter are not rare. Even Japan with one of the finest radiation safety system had, between 1966 and 1996, 885 failures at nuclear power plants, 193 of which were caused by human errors. (4) In one of his interviews in 1993 about the sinking of the Komsomolets nuclear-powered submarine, Academician Igor Spassky remarked that, unlike the nuclear reactor, the greatest hazard were the two torpedoes with nuclear warheads containing plutonium. Corrosion processes are proceeding apace. According to an overall estimate, the cladding encasing plutonium will begin to erode in the coming two years or so. (5) Up to 40 percent of radiation injuries in personnel come in the wake of radiation accidents of onboard NPP. (6)

It is impossible to separate nuclear weapons from their carriers--submarines, missiles and aircraft--and in all these cases the main safety element is the human factor. Predictable growth in the number of technogenic accidents and mixed technogenic and natural disasters can (unless appropriate measures are taken) have an impact on the overall nuclear and radiation situation in the country and in the defense-industry complex in particular. (7) The role of the human factor under these conditions (on all levels of management) grows tremendously. Accidents happen through operator faults with the exception of those caused by natural risks, which are special in being quasi-stochastic.

We can single out the following types of human failures (when the job cannot be done for objective and subjective reasons) in dealing with the nuclear factor: due to radiation injury; due to receiving false data from the indicators owing to damages to the information systems; due to having no faith in radiation resistance of the equipment in the event of a nuclear explosion (true information can be taken as false); in consequence of the wrong personal attitude to acceptance of expected information.

Nuclear arms and their infrastructure can be represented as a system of elements, everyone of which is a hazard. The presence of nuclear arms on board of a nuclear-propelled submarine renders such a system even less stable. However, the intrinsic properties of nuclear arms cannot show up unprovoked. They can become dangerous only within a "nuclear arms system (together with the servicing and maintenance systems, delivery vehicles, and so on)--man--environment." It is the last component that the developers of nuclear arms came to pay special attention to especially in the wake of the Chernobyl AES accident.

Most accidents in the United States happened during airborne alert missions. Americans have learned lessons from them, abolished air patrolling and stepped up efforts to enhance nuclear arms safety. This did not take place in our own country and that slackened vigilance. Since there were no accidents involving nuclear arms, vigilance slackened on all nuclear facilities around the country. The corollary was the Chernobyl accident of the highest (seventh) degree on the IAEA scale.

No accident happens without a cause; it is always preceded by an aggregate of varied physical, technical, human, social and even political symptoms. As we know, human errors occur only when people cannot help making them.

It is an uphill task to estimate quantitatively the contribution of the human factor to the overall nuclear facilities safety system. An accident and, even more so, a disastrous situation generate fear that paralyzes the will, and the instinct of self-preservation triggers unpredictable behavior. At the same time, it is necessary to develop a methodology for predicting human behavior in extreme situations for the benefit of safety at accident-prone facilities.

In 1986, IAEA passed a decision on the inclusion of the human factor in the general "probability risk assessment" methodology. Analysis of human reliability, as a distinct subject of studies, is an outgrowth of methods to assess safety measures in the production of nuclear arms. This gave rise to the term "human error rate." An important drawback of these methods is that they are not quite effective in appraising internal mechanisms of decisionmaking, such as reasoning, associations, and memory. Human errors can be understood only in the context of human cognitive model. For this reason, probability safety assessment should be used, albeit with certain skepticism. This attitude to probabilistic methods is also expressed in a review of European programs stressing the human factor in training personnel for nuclear electric power stations where they conclude, on the basis of experience gained in running aviation facilities, that it is impossible to quantitatively describe activities of a human operator owing to their considerable intrinsic uncertainty. The IAEA thinks it would pay to combine the probabilistic and deterministic methods. (8) However, it is essential for most accident-prone facilities to assess their safety, and they cannot afford waiting until acceptable models of human activities are developed.

The 1987 London conference on reliability of human operators in nuclear power engineering discussed the wisdom of the rule of thirty-minute prohibition against human operators' interference in the operation of the automatic equipment during emergencies. (9) Despite the higher probability of human operators' errors in emergency, this rule came under criticism because most emergency situations are unique.

The IAEA publishes "Security Reports" examining instances of practical measures to improve safety culture. According to the IAEA publication INSAG-4, "safety culture is that assembly of characteristics and attitudes in organizations and individuals which establishes that, as an overriding priority, nuclear plant safety issues receive the attention warranted by their significance." Safety culture requires of those responsible for safety, among other things, precise performance of all their duties based on complete knowledge, common sense and the sense of responsibility. The IAEA publications cite many interesting examples of nuclear safety practices. The agency recommends the publication of monthly or even weekly leaflets with the names of foremost employees, monetary remunerations for their proposals to improve safety and reserving for them personal parking spaces. These are clearly stated social principles of safety. One report cites the use of a plain tag at one of nuclear facilities with STAR (Stop, Think, Act, Review) written on it.

Low-standard technological culture can result in radiation accidents. (10) During a scheduled maintenance of the K-140 nuclear-powered submarine, the electricians misaligned the phases and the reactor spontaneously caused a surge in capacity that was 18 times above the rated. This resulted in a meltdown of the core. There was a similar accident in 1980 involving the K-222 nuclear-powered submarine when the personnel checking its nuclear propulsion plant made blunders in the power supply circuit. The unit responsible for closing down the reactor operated "contrariwise" thus putting the reactor out of commission. Errors made by the Theodore Roosevelt submarine crew working on its nuclear propulsion plant in 1961 resulted in a higher level of radioactivity. V.A. Legasov cited, in a publication headlined "My Duty Is To Tell About It," (11) a conversation between operators shortly before the Chernobyl accident. "One operator calls his mate on the phone to ask: 'The program here says what should be done and much of what follows next is deleted, what shall I do?' The other operator said on momentary reflection: 'Follow the deleted instructions.'" This is of course an exceptional case. But this happened during a year of highly responsible attitudes on the part of the maintenance and operational personnel. During the period of social instability and a breakdown of performance-of-duty discipline, such situations in the nuclear military complex can entail tragic consequences.

The sociopsychological aspects of attitudes of the personnel (crews) of submarines, aircraft, etc. to nuclear weapons as a factor of increased radiation risk are not to be ignored. Given the Chernobyl disaster experience, we should pay special attention to sociopsychological adjustments of personal qualities of submarine, air etc., operators during the periods of emergency situations. People have different reactions to the same values of social risk owing to their different psychological, moral, ideological and political orientations (principles). It is very hard to assess social risks if the probability of the event is small but its consequences are vast.

From our standpoint, studies of the human factor could also extend to such areas as ways and methods of bringing down the threshold of radiation risk perception; the selection of operators based not only on psychological but also on radiation criteria (the selection of those with greater resistance to ionizing radiation using genetic markers, but this problem is hard from the point of view of bioethics); optimization of pharmaceutical, chemical and physical protection of the personnel taking care of safety of nuclear facilities; the finding of methods to enhance the nonspecific resistance of operators to extreme situations of military activities involving radiation risks; the development of radiation situation models for training operators with the use of simulators.

While on the subject of the role of man in nuclear safety, it would be appropriate to cite Academician V.A. Legassov who wrote: "Today, we don't have to campaign against what already exploded or what is going to explode suddenly tomorrow. We should realize once and for all: We should campaign for the creation of protective technologies that are equal to the power man has in his control. I campaign for respecting ergonomics, for correct and sensible relationships within the 'man-machine' system. (12)

We should say in conclusion that the role of the human factor would grow in the efforts to convert the nuclear forces to civilian uses (not to the detriment of the armed forces). The operators of missile launchers, nuclear-powered submarines, etc. find themselves as part of a system of enormous relationships and phenomena. For this reason, the role of the human factor in nuclear safety should be regarded on a broader scale, down to its sociopolitical, moral and even religious aspects. This is especially important now that so many people are under the spell of all manner of religious and surrogate dogmas ranging from Blavatsky's theosophy to Hubbard's scientology.

Finally, the sociopolitical instability in the world as a whole (not only in individual countries) can nullify all studies into enhancing safety of nuclear technology and eliminate the role of the human factor in maintaining nuclear stability. Important elements of this problem are the sociopsychological aspects of the public reactions to nuclear facilities and the technogenic risks in peacetime. The "man and nuclear technologies" problem is much more complicated than it appears from this examination. Many of its aspects all for special study. Nuclear technologies call for a special attitude on the part of human operators and society as a whole.

NOTES:

(1.) See: V.N. Mikhailov, "Rossiya--yadernaya derzhava," Strategicheskaya stabilnost, No. 3, 2001, pp. 5-8.

(2.) See: L.A. Kononov, "O probleme yadernoi opasnosti v sovremennom mire," Voennaia mysl, No. 1, 2001, pp. 4-11; R.M. Timerbaev, "Sostoyanie i perspektivy yadernogo nerasprostraneniya," Yadernyi Kontrol, No. 2, 2001, pp. 24-35.

(3.) See: N.N. Radaev, "Printsipy zadaniya trebovanii k yadernomy oruzhiyu po bezopasnosti," Voennaia mysl, No. 2, 1999, pp. 41-44.

(4.) See: K. Tokano, "Resultaty analiza otkazov na AES, vyzvannykh oshibkami cheloveka-operatora," Transl. from the Japanese, Atomnaya tekhnika za rubezhom, No. 9, 2000, pp. 31-32.

(5.) See: A. Yemelyanenkov, Arkhipelag sredmash, Moscow, 2000.

(6.) See: G.Yu. Sharaevsky, M.B. Murin, A.D. Belikov, O.N. Petrov, "Sostoyanie i aktualnye voprosy obespecheniya radiatsionnoy zashchity lichnogo sostava VMF," Voenno-meditsinsky zhurnal, No. 7, 1999, pp. 62-65.

(7.) See: V.I. Osipov, "Prirodnye katastrofy na rubezhe XXI veka," Vestnik RAN, No. 4, 2001, pp. 291-302.

(8.) See: Ye. Tarakanov, V. Larin, "Chernye byli podvodnykh chernobylei," Energiya: ekonomika, tekhnika, ekologiya, No. 9, 1999, pp. 19-23.

(9.) See: A. Conway, "Nuclear Power's Riskiest Component," Mod. Power Syst., Vol. 8, No. 2, 1988, pp. 19-21.

(10.) See: K. Tokano, op. cit.

(11.) V.A. Legassov, "Moi dolg--rasskazat ob etom," Energiya: ekonomika, tekhnika, ekologiya, No. 1, 1997, pp. 48-52.

(12.) Ibidem.

Maj. Gen. of Medical Service I.B. USHAKOV

Doctor of Medical Sciences

Col. of Medical Service B.I. DAVYDOV (Ret.)

Doctor of Medical Sciences

Col. of Medical Service V.G. ZUYEV

Candidate of Medical Sciences