Nuclear power plant communications in normative and actual practice: A field study of control room operators' communications

Abstract

The safety and availability of sociotechnical critical systems still relies on human operators, both through human reliability and human ability to handle adequately unexpected events. In this article, the authors focus on ergonomic field studies of nuclear power plant control room operator activities, and more specifically on the analysis of communications within control room crews. They show how operators use vague and porous verbal exchanges to produce continuous, redundant, and diverse interactions to successfully construct and maintain individual and mutual awareness, which is paramount to achieve system stability and safety. Such continuous interactions enable the operators to prevent, detect, and reverse system errors or flaws by anticipation or regulation. This study helps in providing cues for the design of more workable systems for human cooperation in nuclear power plant operation.

Human System Interface Design and Operators Cognitive Strategies

“…Direct observations led to a phenomenological account of the work activities in the NPP operation and a set of general patterns of behaviour and decisionmaking [10]. Video-and audio recording allowed a detailed study of the verbal protocols and implicit communication patterns [11] -focused on the anticipatory nature of behaviour, and substantiated the general findings of the direct observations.…”

Collective work and resilience of complex systems

“…The analysis of nuclear power plant operators' work activities (Carvalho, Santos, Gomes, & Borges, 2008;Carvalho, Vidal, & Carvalho, 2007;Santos, 2005 andCarvalho, 2006) enables us to spot certain elements in real work situations, bringing up new forms of cooperation and, in addition, increase the number of errors as well as the possibilities for recovery. Those error anticipation mechanisms, developed through cooperation during actual work situations, enable early detection and elimination of errors, improving operation safety and system resilience (Cook & Nemeth, 2006;Woods, 2006).…”

On the Use of Checklists in Auditing: A Commentary

“…Fischhoff et al (1978) explain that fault trees can help people who deal with complex fallible systems to better describe and comprehend these systems. Carvalho et al (2005) and Carvalho et al (2007) report that, at nuclear power plants, personnel use both procedural and judgmental checklists. In plant procedures, the actions of operators are described by flowcharts to illustrate the sequence of the system's actions, as well as checklists in which operators document the specific manual actions they executed.…”

“…Our review of the literature identified factors that influence the effectiveness of judgment checklists that we have summarized in Figure 1 under four main headings: nature of the task, Nuclear power plant procedural checklists (Carvalho et al 2005 andCarvalho et al 2007) Procedural generic audit checklists (Blocher et al 1983;McDaniel 1990) Checklist of common pitfalls and cognitive forcing functions for a specific disease (Ely et al 2011) a Procedural customized audit checklists (Cowperthwaite 2012) Judgmental (cognitive procedure)-checklists designed to assist with making a judgment such as acceptance of an existing or potential client, internal control evaluation, or assessment of fraud risk.…”

“…In plant procedures, the actions of operators are described by flowcharts to illustrate the sequence of the system's actions, as well as checklists in which operators document the specific manual actions they executed. According to Carvalho et al (2005) and Carvalho et al (2007), checklists help operators adapt to a high degree of plant automation. Specifically, when they work with checklists, operators become more aware of plant conditions, because checklists prompt them to look for information that is not readily available without a stimulus.…”