Job requirements for control room jobs in nuclear power plants

Abstract

Together with other variables, human factors play a central role in the safety of highly complex technical systems such as nuclear power plants. However, despite the unquestionable importance of human factors, little information is available about relevant ability requirements for control room jobs in nuclear power plants. The purpose of this study was to close this gap, to provide specific information about ability requirements for such jobs, and to evaluate how several hypothesized factors (ability domain, type of job, and operating condition) contribute to ability requirements. We found that high levels of cognitive as well as social/interpersonal abilities are needed for control room jobs, and that ability requirements increase with the hierarchical job level for these two domains but decrease for psychomotor/physical abilities and for sensory/perceptual abilities. Furthermore, specifically concerning jobs with a leadership function, we found some differences between incidents and normal operations regarding requirements for social/interpersonal abilities, indicating that the former require a different leadership style than the latter. Together with other variables, human factors play a central role in the safety of highly complex technical systems such as nuclear power plants. However, despite the unquestionable importance of human factors, little information is available about relevant ability requirements for control room jobs in nuclear power plants. The purpose of this study was to close this gap, to provide specific information about ability requirements for such jobs, and to evaluate how several hypothesized factors (ability domain, type of jobs, and operating conditions) contribute to ability requirements. We found that high levels of cognitive as well as social/interpersonal abilities are needed for control room jobs, and that ability requirements increase with the hierarchical job level for these two domains but decrease for psychomotor/physical abilities and for sensory/perceptual abilities. Furthermore, specifically concerning jobs with a leadership function, we found some differences between incidents and normal operations regarding requirements for social/interpersonal abilities, indicating that the former require a different leadership style than the latter.

Cognitive demands and mental workload: A filed study of the mining control room operators

“…The control room operation is a complex job that depends on the operator's cognitive demands such as attention, decision making, problem solving and etc. (Vit orio et al 2012;Schumacher et al 2011). Besides, the responsibility for maintaining the safety of the system and human resources is the main function of a control room operator, which puts extra mental workload on them (Aric o et al, 2016).…”

“…Changing analog systems to computer systems in modern control rooms has led to greater complexity and increased human error (Stanton et al, 2017). Studies show that increasing the probability of human error increases the risk of accidents (Schumacher et al 2011). Most accidents that result from human error are influenced by the complex design of socio-technical systems or the mismatch between the complexity of tasks and the capabilities of the human operator (Gomes et al, 2015).…”

Human Factors in the Cybersecurity of Autonomous Vehicles: Trends in Current Research

“…Employees with higher threat awareness and countermeasure awareness perform better in cybersecurity tasks (Torten et al, 2018). Experience from nuclear power plant personnel selection shows that people hired for different positions need different set of skills (Schumacher et al, 2011). Teams that contain people with hostile personality traits perform better in solving cybersecurity scenarios (Cowley et al, 2015), while people with interest in a cybersecurity career tend to have higher self-efficacy and a rational decision-making style (Bashir et al, 2017).…”

The Influence of Individual and Team Cognitive Ability on Operators’ Task and Safety Performance: A Multilevel Field Study in Nuclear Power Plants

“…While these aspects of performance have been mostly researched in the framework of motivation, social influence and stress [10] , they may also be influenced by GMA for two reasons. First, according to the job-demand-control model [11] , when operators have equal job-demands, high GMA ones are more likely to take control of their work than their low GMA counterparts and therefore have better safety performance [12] , [13] . Second, from a learning perspective, GMA and work experience can interact to influence one’s job-related knowledge, which can in turn promote both task and safety performance [9] , [14] .…”

“…Nevertheless, evidence shows that high GMA is related to a reduced involvement in accidents and more organizational participatory behaviors [29] – [31] . These findings can be explained in a job-demand-control framework [11] : as GMA is one of the most important abilities required by MCR operators [12] , those with a high level of GMA are more likely to take control of their work given job-demand being equal, which can in turn increase their safety performance [13] . As a result, we postulate Hypothesis 1:…”