Technical basis for staffing levels at nuclear power plants

The objective of this project is to provide a technical basis for the establishment of criteria for minimum staffing levels of licensed and non-licensed NPP shift personnel. Minimum staffing levels for the purpose of this study, are defined as those necessary for successful accomplishment of all safety and additional functions that must be performed in order for the licensee to meet applicable regulatory requirements. This project involves a multi-faceted approach to the investigation of the issue. Relevant NRC documentation was identified and reviewed. Using the information obtained from this documentation review, a test plan was developed to aid in the collection of further information regarding the adequacy of current shift staffing levels. The test plan addresses three different activities to be conducted to provide information to the NRC for use in the assessment of current minimum staffing levels. The first activity is collection of data related to industry shift staffing practices through site visits to seven nuclear power plants. The second activity is a simulator study, which will use licensed operator crews responding to a simulated event, under two different staffing levels. Finally, workload models will be constructed for both licensed and non-licensed personnel, using a priori knowledge of themore » simulator scenarios with data resulting from one of the staffing levels studied in the simulator, and the data collected from the site visits. The model will then be validated against the data obtained from the second staffing level studied in the simulator. The validated model can then be used to study the impact of changing staffing-related variables on the plant shift crew`s ability to effectively mitigate an event.« less