Chat Functionality for Communication between Centralized Control Room and Field Operators in a Nuclear Power Plant

Abstract

The Nuclear Power Industry nowadays is still operating with communication equipment that does not utilize the technology that has become common the last 20 years. There is a desire to upgrade these communication systems, and a research activity has been started on this task at the OECD Halden Reactor Project. As the communication between field operators and control room still consist of a broadcast/landlines-system a possibility is to add a portable unit with a synchronous messaging feature, commonly known as a chat.As the consequences of faults in a Nuclear Power Plant is potentially fatal, one of the main considerations, in addition to improving efficiency, is to maintain security. To do so the communication between the control room and field operators need to contain, ideally, no mistakes or confusion. The efficiency is believed to be improved by making it possible for the operators to stay put, answering certain questions from the control room in writing.To achieve a low rate of misunderstandings and confusion some extra features is added to the application, tested by writers of other articles about chat confusion. When interviewing operators abut the application there is a bit of scepticism about the need for such an extension. An optimism about communication with multimedia is showed and this is a feature that the operators them selves believe to be useful.The system made in this article is made as an input to the portable device application to be tested during 2014, and need extensive testing. In order of achieving the goal of no misunderstandings or confusion the application needs to be tested mainly on the amount of use, amount of misunderstandings and how the operators perceive its user friendliness compared to traditional systems.