Interim results of the study of control room crew staffing for advanced passive reactor plants

Technical Report · Fri Mar 01 04:00:00 EST 1996

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/269680· OSTI ID:269680

Hallbert, B. P.; Sebok, A.; Haugset, K. ^[1]

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1. OECD Halden Reactor Project (Norway)

Differences in the ways in which vendors expect the operations staff to interact with advanced passive plants by vendors have led to a need for reconsideration of the minimum shift staffing requirements of licensed Reactor Operators and Senior Reactor Operators contained in current federal regulations (i.e., 10 CFR 50.54(m)). A research project is being carried out to evaluate the impact(s) of advanced passive plant design and staffing of control room crews on operator and team performance. The purpose of the project is to contribute to the understanding of potential safety issues and provide data to support the development of design review guidance. Two factors are being evaluated across a range of plant operating conditions: control room crew staffing; and characteristics of the operating facility itself, whether it employs conventional or advanced, passive features. This paper presents the results of the first phase of the study conducted at the Loviisa nuclear power station earlier this year. Loviisa served as the conventional plant in this study. Data collection from four crews were collected from a series of design basis scenarios, each crew serving in either a normal or minimum staffing configuration. Results of data analyses show that crews participating in the minimum shift staffing configuration experienced significantly higher workload, had lower situation awareness, demonstrated significantly less effective team performance, and performed more poorly as a crew than the crews participating in the normal shift staffing configuration. The baseline data on crew configurations from the conventional plant setting will be compared with similar data to be collected from the advanced plant setting, and a report prepared providing the results of the entire study.

• Research Organization: Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC (United States). Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research; Brookhaven National Lab., Upton, NY (United States)
• OSTI ID: 269680
• Report Number(s): NUREG/CP--0149-Vol.2; CONF-9510156--Vol.2; ON: TI96007985
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS
CONTROL ROOMS
DIAGRAMS
NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS
NUMERICAL DATA
OPTIMIZATION
PERFORMANCE
PERSONNEL
REACTOR OPERATORS