COMPARISON OF WORK ACCIDENTS BETWEEN ELECTRICITY GENERATION COMPANIES IN BRAZIL INCLUDING ELETRONUCLEAR

The public acceptance of nuclear power depends on information about its safety and sustainability record, and inevitably on comparisons with other industrial technologies. An important issue regarding social sustainability is accidents in workplaces among in-house and outsourced employees. Companies in the electric power generation sector regularly report on workplace accidents that occur at their facilities in their sustainability reports that are open to the public. This study evaluates these reported data from electricity generation companies in Brazil that make them available to the public being one of them Eletronuclear, the Brazilian company that generates electricity based on the nuclear technology. The indicators used were the number of fatal and non-fatal accidents, man-hours of exposure to risk, the rate of work-related accidents per 1 million man-hours of exposure to risk (TF) and work accident severity of work. Eleven Brazilian electricity generating companies were examined. Of these companies, only 3 reported data on work-related accidents between in-house and outsourced workers. The TF rate for outsourced workers is usually between 1.7 and 4.4 times the figures for self-employed workers and Eletronuclear presents the lowest ratio. Eletronuclear appears in the group of companies with best work practices and compliance with labor legislation.