Comparative Study of Communication Error between Conventional and Digital MCR Operators in NPPs

In this regard, the appropriate communication is directly related to the efficient and safe system operation, and inappropriate communication is one of the main causes of the accidents in various industries since inappropriate communications can cause a lack of necessary information exchange between operators and lead to serious consequences in large process systems such as nuclear power plants. According to the study conducted by Y. Hirotsu in 2001, about 25 percents of human error caused incidents in NPPs were related to communication issues. Also, other studies were reported that 85 percents of human error caused incidents in aviation industry and 92 percents in railway industry were related to communication problems. Accordingly, the importance of the efforts for reducing inappropriate communications has been emphasized in order to enhance the safety of pre-described systems. As a result, the average ratio of inappropriate communication in digital MCRs was slightly higher than that in conventional MCRs when the average ratio of no communication in digital MCRs was much smaller than that in conventional MCRs. Regarding the average ratio of inappropriate communication, it can be inferred that operators are still more familiar to the conventional MCRs than digital MCRs. More case studies are required for more delicate comparison since there were only three examined cases for digital MCRs. However, similar result is expected because there are no differences in communication method, although there are many differences in the way of procedure proceeding