An empirical investigation of operator performance in cognitively demanding simulated emergencies

Abstract

This report documents the results of an empirical study of nuclear power plant operator performance in cognitively demanding simulated emergencies. During emergencies operators follow highly prescriptive written procedures. The objectives of the study were to understand and document what role higher-level cognitive activities such as diagnosis, or more generally `situation assessment`, play in guiding operator performance, given that operators utilize procedures in responding to the events. The study examined crew performance in variants of two emergencies: (1) an Interfacing System Loss of Coolant Accident and (2) a Loss of Heat Sink scenario. Data on operator performance were collected using training simulators at two plant sites. Up to 11 crews from each plant participated in each of two simulated emergencies for a total of 38 cases. Crew performance was videotaped and partial transcripts were produced and analyzed. The results revealed a number of instances where higher-level cognitive activities such as situation assessment and response planning enabled crews to handle aspects of the situation that were not fully addressed by the procedures. This report documents these cases and discusses their implications for the development and evaluation of training and control room aids, as well as for human reliability analyses.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 112 citations exist upstream.