Development of a communication database of main control room operators in emergency situations in nuclear power plants

Abstract

As mentioned by many researchers, the performance of main control room (MCR) operators during emergency situations in nuclear power plants (NPPs) is strongly affected by not only the cognitive process of each operator, but also by communications and collaboration among operators. In the course of developing a standard communication protocol for MCR operators in NPPs for the management of emergency situations, we recorded the emergency operations by 10 MCR operator teams in simulated emergency situations. The beginning time, the end time, the speaker and the content of each communication were analyzed and summarized as a communication database. The communication database will be extended by recording the emergency operations of other MCR operator teams and detailed analyses on the performance of MCR operator teams in emergency situations in NPPs, such as the completion time of each step, the relation between the performance of different teams and their different communication protocols, will be conducted based on the communication database. Some qualitative insights from the analysis of the communication database are also included in the paper.