Development of an integrated evaluation model of technical and non-technical skills for nuclear power plant operation teams

Abstract

The nuclear industry have strived for functional enhancement of the nuclear power plant (NPP) system itself by upgrading and improving pieces of equipment, and quantitative/qualitative advancement of support functions for operators by introducing various operation support systems for effective and safe operation of NPPs. However, after the Fukushima accident, the management started to pay attention to enhancement of operators’ abilities itself to handle normal/off-normal operating situations other than hardware upgrade and functional support. These kind of abilities are normally acquired through education and training (training for the rest). Most of training in NPPs at the moment is fulfilled with qualified individuals together on a full scope simulator. The most important here is ‘training in NPPs is designed for the operation team which consists of specialists in nuclear, electric, mechanical fields, etc.’Improper fault diagnoses of the operation team can induce severe accidents, such as a core damage. So a diagnosis task of operation team is directly related to safety of NPPs, and therefore, a certain level of skills are required to perform the task. There are two types of skills to be considered for the operation team: technical skills and non-technical skills. Technical skills here are abilities to use knowledge, methods, and equipment to perform specific tasks, whereas non-technical skills are generic skills that underpin and enhance technical tasks, improving safety by helping people to anticipate, identify and mitigate against errors. Main problems of the current training system is an unestablished team training evaluation system and the absence of a non-technical skills evaluation method. Hereupon, this research suggested ‘an integrated model of technical and non-technical skills training’ for effective training of operation teams. Firstly, technical and non-technical skills evaluation methods. Then, the integrated performance evaluation method was s...