Empirical investigation of workloads of operators in advanced control rooms

Abstract

This paper compares the workloads of operators in a computer-based control room of an advanced power reactor (APR 1400) nuclear power plant to investigate the effects from the changes in the interfaces in the control room. The cognitive–communicative–operative activity framework was employed to evaluate the workloads of the operator's roles during emergency operations. The related data were obtained by analyzing the tasks written in the procedures and observing the speech and behaviors of the reserved operators in a full-scope dynamic simulator for an APR 1400. The data were analyzed using an F-test and a Duncan test. It was found that the workloads of the shift supervisors (SSs) were larger than other operators and the operative activities of the SSs increased owing to the computer-based procedure. From these findings, methods to reduce the workloads of the SSs that arise from the computer-based procedure are discussed.