Training diagnostic skills for nuclear power plants

Operators of large-scale industrial process plants such as nuclear power stations and chemical plants are faced with a critical and complex task when confronted with disturbances in normal operation caused by technical failures or mainte- nances errors. Great care must be taken to prepare and support the operators during such situations. Procedural systems are provided, trained on full-scale highfidelity simulators is often a prerequisite and decision-support systems are starting to be incorporated, especially in modern control rooms. During recent years, it has become increasingly clear from ''real-life'' studies in complex production and transport industries that professional highly skilled troubleshooters can develop effective general purpose search strategies for locating and dealing with faults and, most importantly, with new and not previously experienced faults. This research has indicated that means for training of these general diagnostic abilities can be developed. In addition, other work has dealt with the problem of observing and analyzing operator behaviour in coping with disturbances. The NKA/LIT-4 project has continued these efforts in studying methods for training diagnostic skills as well as for observing and testing operator behaviour on training simulators. (author)