Halden

On Thursday 16th January, Claire Blackett, Ella Olson and Benjamin Langerak Tottie from Risk Pilot visited the Halden SMR Control Room Simulator (HSMR) at the Institute for Energy Technology (IFE) in Norway to learn more about how Small Modular Reactor (SMR) plants might be operated in the future. The visit occurred in conjunction with a research project that Risk Pilot is conducting for Sweden’s Radiation Safety Authority (Strålsäkerhetsmyndigheten) to investigate what kinds of operator tasks will be needed to operate these highly automated, advanced plants safely and efficiently. Claire, Ella and Benjamin were joined by Linn Gustafsson, who is a M.Sc. student in Cognitive Science at Lund University. In her thesis, Linn will explore challenges and assumptions about how SMRs will be operated, based on conditions in operator environments, and how these may differ from current conventional sized nuclear power plants.

The group had the opportunity to meet with Robert McDonald, Principal Engineer and process expert at IFE, who gave an overview of SMR operations and the iPWR simulator set up. They also had the opportunity to try out some operator tasks on the iPWR, using a new tablet-based operating procedure tool, and to talk with some of the IFE researchers about different aspects of SMR operations. The visit helped the group to gain greater understanding of the kinds of tasks that operators will have to perform, and the factors that might affect their performance in these tasks.

Many thanks again to IFE and to Robert for facilitating the visit, and to the researchers for their time and valuable insights!