Linn's Thesis

Congratulations from all of us at Risk Pilot to Linn Gustafsson on the successful completion of her master’s thesis at Lund University! The topic of Linn’s thesis is “Exploring Professionals´ Perspectives on Cognitive Challenges Associated with Control Room Designs in Small Modular Reactors”.

The study aimed to investigate the concept of the SMR multi-unit control room and the challenges this might present for operators responsible for monitoring multiple highly automated systems simultaneously. Through interviews with subject matter experts working in the nuclear industry, Linn explored differences between two contrasting control room design concepts: a separated design, with dedicated, spatially separated workstations for each reactor unit, and an integrated design, whereby all units can be monitored and controlled from a single workstation. Interviewees were asked their opinions about the potential impact of these two different designs on aspects of operator cognition, such as attention, working memory and spatial memory.

Overall, the results from Linn’s thesis suggest that the separated design concept would better support operator cognition and human performance, although this will depend on the number of units that the operator must monitor simultaneously.

Linn’s study was conducted in collaboration with Risk Pilot’s ongoing research project titled “A Taxonomy for Human Reliability Analysis of Small Modular Reactors”, which is funded by Strålsäkerhetsmyndigheten. We believe that Linn’s thesis makes an important contribution to international research on the operation of SMRs and we are proud to have been a part of this work!

The photo is from a visit to the Halden SMR simulator at the Institute for Energy Technology (IFE) in Halden, Norway which took place in January. Many thanks to IFE for hosting us!