How Will Be the Situation Awareness of Operating Team in an Advanced MCR?

Abstract

Environments in nuclear power plants (NPPs) are changing as the design of instrumentation and control (I&C) systems for NPPs are rapidly moving toward fully digital I&C, and modern computer techniques have been gradually introduced into the main control room (MCR). In the context of these environmental changes, the level of performance of operators in a digital MCR is a major concern. Situation awareness (SA), which is used within human factors research to explain to what extent operators of safety-critical systems know what is transpiring in the system and the environment, is considered a prerequisite factor to guarantee the safe operation of NPPs. However, safe operation of NPPs can be guaranteed by team efforts. In this regard, the operating team’s SA in a conventional and digital MCR should be measured in order to assess whether the new design features implemented in a digital MCR affect this parameter. This paper explains the team SA measurement method used in this study and the results of applying this measurement method to operating teams in different MCR environments. Also, this paper discusses some lessons learned from the results.